


play (until your heart breaks through your ribs)

by oneese



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Football, Arsenal FC, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-05-13 05:09:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5696212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneese/pseuds/oneese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>football au; two boys growing up in the world of football (together - alone). getting to know themselves and the pitch. and learning that you can’t be the same person in the stadium as out of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. let the joy sink in

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: the original version that i posted of this has been deleted for some unknown reason and it seems i won't be able to retrieve it. so i'm posting again, for the people who did want to read it and because i want to finish it myself. sorry for this really !!! everything is the same, it just has been a rly big sucky moment
> 
> tw: none

It starts like this: boys dreaming of stadiums full of people wearing red and white, of the mass beating like a living heart, coursing with cheers and screams and tears of joy, bleeding with hopes and dreams.

Boys longing for wins and victories, for trophies to carry on the back of calloused hands and on shoulders. Boys wanting to balance the wishes of millions along the span of their backs and be able to fulfill them.

Boys dreaming bigger than most, wanting more than many and always reaching for the stars (starting a galaxy in their palms).

+

People described Wembley to Alex as the cathedral of football, a holy place to never be forgotten, cut out of the dreams of engineers. And the moment when he finally goes to his first match in the infamous stadium filled by so many, everything clicks into place.

A bleeding heart pumping in the middle of the stadium, bleeding white and red and constricting with joy and hope; undying spirit. Alex feels like he’s a part of it; just a twelve-year-old in a football shirt too big for his frame, stretched out by his brother and his father before him - carrying three generations on his back, but he feels like he slots right in.

He tugs on his father’s hand, feels cuts and scars along the skin of his palm and doesn’t think about how they came to be (long hours, heavy work, too much for too little), because he’s too busy looking at the pitch below, trying to read all the names and numbers on the players’ backs (too busy being a child).

Years later, Alex will cover his father’s hands with his own, look him in the eye and tell him ‘I got this one’, talking about rent and food and electricity bills all at once. He’ll say thank you and give his father a kiss on the cheek and say thank you again, because somewhere Alex wonders who he would have become if he hadn’t experienced the feeling of the Wembley stadium exploding around him when England scored a goal.

+

Ross meets Alex when he’s sixteen years old and running himself into the ground till his calves protest and his legs feel like they’re on fire. He isn’t certain if he’s really on the pitch anymore, too sunken in his own thoughts of ‘keep going’ and ‘I have to improve’, too lost in the way his corner kick is still slightly off target and the way his left is still too sloppy.

He isn’t really certain where he is at all until he loses his balance and is met with dirt and grass and the sky darkening above him. It’s then that exhaustion not so much creeps up onto him as it comes crashing down onto his shoulders.

He can hear the football roll past him and if the muscles in his arm weren’t so exhausted, maybe he would have stretched out his hand and caught it. Maybe he would have pressed his cheek against the leather of the ball and reminded himself why he’s doing this. But his muscles protest and he only digs his fingers into the dirt, tangling them with grass, waiting to catch his breath and his determination.

He closes his eyes, for a moment or for several minutes he doesn’t know, until there’s a dull thud and he looks up again. The football gets dropped onto his chest, knocks the little breath he still has in his lungs out of them, but this time Ross manages to wind his arms around it before it rolls away again.

He lets his forehead drop against the cool leather, thinks: ‘mum will be worried’ and ‘my corner kick is still not right’, before someone clears their throat. Two football boots, old and worn and faded, enter the corner of his sight and before he knows it, a boy his age plops down on the grass next to him.

He doesn’t do much, just looks at Ross with eyes that seem too old for his face before he smiles (small, just a little really – but it smooths out the lines on his forehead enough to make him seem more his age).

‘’I’m Alex,’’ His voice is slightly accented, but Ross doesn’t really mind – it’s nice. ‘’Want to play?’’ And Ross knows he’s hinting at the football still resting on his chest without opening his eyes (even if he didn’t realize he had closed them).

His body wants to say no, but his mind (his soul – spirit) says yes instead and Ross thinks he has gathered enough determination again for one final round before he hurries home, toes off his shoes and kisses his mother on the cheek, to assure her he wouldn’t stay out that late ever again (even if he will the very next day, because his corner kick is still some off and he needs it to be better – the best).

So he raises a hand and the other boy catches his fingers with his own and pulls him up.

He says ‘yeah, alright’ with no words as he drops the football on the ground and takes off with it. He says – screams – ‘’I’m Ross’’ when he scores a goal in an open net, Alex still standing in the middle of the field, smiling a little bigger this time.

And they play.

+

Ross cries the day he gets the news that yes, the board of Everton would love to sign him. He receives the news when he’s walking home, one hand fumbling for his phone while the other tries to keep the umbrella up.

He curses the rain underneath his breath, knows it’s the reason why he doesn’t have training today is because the weather forecast predicted a storm, but keeps in mind that later he is meeting Alex at the field behind his house to practice his free kick this time.

He flips open his phone, a crackling interference carrying through the line, but eventually the low voice of his father sounds through the device. 

He thinks it’s a joke at first, because the scouts were at one of his games weeks ago and he had heard nothing for all that time. It had stung at first, he had balled his fingers into fists and forced a smile every time one of his friends came back with good news about some club he had never heard of.

Even when Alex had announced that Birmingham City wanted to sign him, he felt a little bit of jealousy gnaw at his thoughts before he denied it any attention, because this guy had become his best friend and goddamn, if he wasn’t going to be happy for him. So instead he had hugged Alex, buried his face in the crook of his neck and whispered congratulations against his skin.

He laughs into the phone before his dad repeats the news and it’s seriousness that laces the words. He thinks: ‘fuck, finally’ before he looks at the sky and lowers his umbrella. He likes to think god cries with him in tow (in joy).

He tells Alex later that night, as his cleats are mucked with mud and grass, that has come loose with too many rough tackles and passionate shots that dug more into the pitch than into the side of the ball. As he’s out of breath, from trying to score and defend and keep possession all at the same time, and it’s just a whisper above the rain – rain that hasn’t stopped since the afternoon.

Although Ross thinks the downfall has stopped for a moment as Alex looks at him with a grin that seems to blind him for anything else but him. He hears, more than sees, Alex approach, because of the way his hair is matted to his forehead and just a little over his eyes from sweat or rain – maybe both – he doesn’t know.

He feels him put his hands on his shoulders, warm palms on cool skin, and Ross thinks it would be a miracle if neither of them have a cold next week – yet in that moment Ross can’t find it in himself to care, not even when his mind reminds him he would miss football practice then. In the moment all Ross can find himself wanting to think about is Alex and the beginning of something that could be a career in football.

He feels a little bit at home in the middle of this muddy pitch, standing in the rain with a football at his feet and Alex at his side.


	2. cliff tops

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: the original version that i posted of this has been deleted for some unknown reason and it seems i won't be able to retrieve it. so i'm posting again, for the people who did want to read it and because i want to finish it myself. sorry for this really !!! everything is the same, it just has been a rly big sucky moment
> 
> tw: none

Ross doesn’t know what he expected, but it was something more than this.

Ross expected something, anything to change, when he put on the Everton shirt and stared at the crest, but – but nothing happened. He looked at the blue shirt and expected to feel at home, expected to feel like he slots right in with the club, to feel the crest beat like a second heart next to his own and yet – yet it doesn’t happen.

Ross expected more than just a warm content feeling in the pit of his stomach when he warms the bench but never gets playing time. It’s not that he expected minutes, because he is only sixteen and has no experience like these players carrying the crest like a shield and using ball and legs like weapons to defend their club – he understands that for now his place is at the sidelines.

It’s not that he expected anything unrealistic – it’s that he expected to feel like he belonged, to want to fight for and defend and love Everton. And he does love it, a little bit – getting stronger with the months he spends there, but it’s not the undying fire he expected to feel in his heart, in his feet and hands and soul.

It’s not the love that great footballers of his time speak of and Ross feels a little hopeless at that. He knows he is young and he knows that most likely (hopefully) Everton isn’t the last train station of his career, but maybe, somewhere, he had hoped just a tiny bit that Everton and he would click.

They do, in a way, but it is a process that takes time and energy and effort. It takes Ross hours of running laps and doing push-ups and warming the bench before Everton seems to accept him – it does happen, gradually but it’s not a click that comes instantly – not a click that’s meant to be.

It’s the thought that doesn’t leave his mind when he sees his teammates pass the ball along. Many of them are older, have experience that Ross hopes he will gather one day and he knows that for many Everton is the end of their journey. Many of them would bleed blue if you shot them, Everton blue, and none of them would be apologetic about it.

None of them would doubt to take a bullet for Everton and its loyal fans all piled in Goodinson Park, even when the weather is shit, but Ross doesn’t think he would be able to do that. He would bleed red, because Everton is his club but not his.

He doesn’t know if his teammates would get that, so he keeps quiet. He smiles when they recall matches like they’re war stories and nods when they turn to him and say ‘got that, kid?’ – bites back the ‘I’m not a kid’ because sometimes it’s better to play along.

He shares his thoughts with one person only and Alex seems to understand. The other doesn’t say it out loud, doesn’t nod and doesn’t confirm that he feels the same way but Ross can see it anyway. He sees the way Alex’ shoulders stiffen a little and the way he straightens his spine like he has to prove himself (like he has to defend himself and lie, saying ‘I will bleed for my club, I will fight for my club, this is my club’ with no words).

Ross doesn’t mention it to Alex but they share a look right before Ross clicks to end the video call. It’s a look that says ‘I know’ and pleads ‘don’t tell’. And Ross won’t, because he is no hypocrite.

+

Ross grows up.

It happens and it’s normal – gradual, but sometimes Ross wishes for simpler days. Sometimes, when he’s alone in hotel rooms far away from home for an away game or a training camp, he wishes for days where his only concern was getting his corner kick on point and getting B’s in every subject so his mum wouldn’t stop bringing him to football practice.

Sometimes he wishes the local media would stop trying to make him into 'the wonder child of Everton', the one who will make them league title holders again. Just because veterans have left last season and he is supposed to be fresh (blue) blood to carry them to the top. Ross is not Atlas and he can’t carry all these players, all these fans, to first place – but still he tries, but even that seems never good enough.

They take a bite of him, of one bad performance, of one terrible loss or missed shot, and maul him fine with each and every one of their stories (‘Does Everton need a greater miracle than the wonder kid?’ ‘Hornby does not manage to pull through, again’) and words that are meant to hurt before they spit him out again.

They don’t care that he is only nineteen years old and not comfortable in his own skin and own strip, doesn’t feel like he can connect to the fans, because sometimes he feels like he is betraying them by wearing something that means too much to them and too little to himself.

Ross has been wearing the blue shirt on his back for three years now, but he still feels like the very first time he pulled it on, every time he goes out on the field. He looks at the crest across his heart and he doesn’t feel a second heartbeat fall in sync with the first.

Alex has grown up too, but he has nothing to prove – not a fourth place standing to defend and not numbers and duties to take over. Sometimes Ross envies him for that, before he realizes that Alex has enough on his plate that he has to deal with.

Sometimes Ross gets so lost in his own frustrations, that he forgets that Alex has to provide for an entire family, has to keep their gas and water on and keep them clothed and fed. Sometimes Ross forgets that enviable isn’t how he should feel towards Alex and it isn’t pity either, just admiration – because goddamn, if there’s someone who cares, it’s Alex.

They don’t speak as often as they used to, because their schedules are tight and there’s so little time, but Ross knows Alex still cares. He knows because he still gets texts with too many emojis and dirty jokes after bad games in an attempt to cheer him up. And he still gets monthly calls where Alex asks him how he is doing, meaning truly him and not his club and not the league standings.

It's times like those that remind Ross to send congratulations and funny pictures to Alex whenever his team plays an excellent game. It's times when Ross looks at and reads (again) week old messages filled to the brim with emojis, that he sends one back to tell Alex he misses him in his own way ('wish we could play together, mate').

+

Sometimes they lose and sometimes they win, they rarely draw, but they always play – Ross finds comfort in that fact. With the years, he gets more playtime and by the time he is nineteen, he has made himself a fundamental piece of the starting eleven.

Ross knows there have been players who have done bigger and better things than playing for Everton’s first team when they were nineteen, but his mother tells him to be proud. She doesn’t understand football, but still watches every game of his she can – and she always smiles, kisses him on the cheek and reminds him to be proud.

Alex reminds him of it too, but with less words and more actions. He reminds him when they meet up on a first free day in ages with Ross pressed against Alex’ chest at the airport and the other pushing his nose in dark hair for just a moment, before they both step back and assess the person they left behind to pave their own way to check if they’re still the same.

His heart always rattles in his chest, behind his ribs, when he does that. It’s why he savors the moments where he can’t see anything because his face is buried in the crook of Alex’ neck and tries to take him all in. His heart speeds up and seems to want to escape his chest, because what if his friend has changed – what if he stayed the same and Alex had become a stranger?

He doesn’t know what he would do – hasn’t been put in that situation yet and hopes he never will be. And always, always, when they walk out of the airport to face the city, Liverpool or Birmingham, Alex will let his hand linger on his elbow or his arm for a second, almost like a promise.

+

The stories fade. Ross figures the media finally realizes that his blood doesn’t run blue and that he has no tricks up his sleeve to bring a miracle to Everton. He is good, the media mentions, but he gets lost in the sea of Everton blue more than he stands out. It’s why he sees no highlights of himself and is instead forced to watch Rooney turn a corner kick in or see Gibbs proving that he was worth of the contract he signed.

He doesn’t think they’re doing too bad – they’re only Everton and boxing up against clubs like Manchester United and Chelsea can only get you so far. Sometimes it gets you in the top five and other times it lands you at a spot in the twenties.

Ross has seen it all in his short years with Everton. The good of the top five, of being qualified for the UEFA cup and of almost being able to taste the medal and the gold and the joy on his tongue and the bad of being fifteenth after an amazing last season, of having to watch fans cry in the stands, because he and his team couldn’t deliver.

The season of 2007 and 2008 is one of the better ones, he has to admit, because fifth place is respectable – more than respectable because they got it instead of Manchester City, who Ross hasn’t ever seen playing so bad in his short time in the BPL. They got it instead of Aston Villa, who kept breathing down their necks until the whistle of the final game finally sounded.

And they got it instead of Birmingham City, but Ross doesn’t feel his heart swell with pride at that. Maybe because Alex ignored his texts and calls for a full week after his own final game. Ross doesn’t blame him, because being relegated hurts. It hurts your heart and soul and pride and Ross knows it hurts Alex too. He knows because all Alex ever wanted to do was play first division football and see silverware and kiss trophies and thank fans.

He has been there too, Everton has been there, and it hurts. Ross had felt the defeat creep up on him, settle beneath his skin, becoming an itch he couldn’t scratch, because even if he didn’t bleed blue, he still understood.

So he puts down his phone and doesn’t call for another week, doesn’t call immediately after fourteen days either and in the end, he doesn’t have to. Alex calls him sixteen days after his last game and he sounds broken. Ross wonders if this is the first time Birmingham has gotten relegated and he feels ashamed that he can’t answer that – feels ashamed because their contact has becoming less and less.

There’s some static over the line when Alex stops talking mid-sentence and just breaths. Ross could hear from the way his voice trembled, that he wanted to cry, but had stubbornly blinked away the tears because he couldn’t - not right now.

He thinks it’s stupid that Alex thinks crying has anything to do with pride and he wants to tell him so, but now is not the time, so he bites his tongue and saves it for another time. A time where he sees the other in person and not for a five a.m. phone call.

He doesn’t offer comforting words, because he understands that Alex just wants someone to listen for a bit. Ross guesses that he can’t discuss things like this with his teammates either.

Both of them have teammates who are veterans and have fought in seasons like they were wars and Ross knows that Alex doesn’t feel like he can spring this on anyone who he has to train with five times a week. 

So Ross listens and makes a confirming noise whenever Alex falls silent, to assure he hasn’t fallen asleep yet, even when he has to get up at seven to get ready for the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading !!!!!


	3. all i saw were backs and heads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: the original version that i posted of this has been deleted for some unknown reason and it seems i won't be able to retrieve it. so i'm posting again, for the people who did want to read it and because i want to finish it myself. sorry for this really !!! everything is the same, it just has been a rly big sucky moment
> 
> tw: none

Alex seems both happy for him and bitter the next time they meet up. And it has been too long – the new season has started already, but in between talks of possible transfers and Birmingham City trying to earn their spot in first division back, there had been no time before winter break 2008.

Everton is doing amazing in the season so far, better than expected, and Ross knows he has a lot to do with it. He’s been faster and stronger, he has been scoring more and more and it feels good. It honestly feels good to have Goodison Park explode around him and chant his name. It’s the best Ross has ever felt in the blue shirt – it feels almost a little bit like home and reminds him faintly of a muddy pitch from a long time ago.

Birmingham City has been doing alright too, Ross knows it for a fact, because he has been trying more to keep up with Alex and his team. He watches every game he can, records those he misses, and always sends text messages with funny jokes when they lose and congratulations when they win – and Ross is happy to know that they win more than they lose or draw. He decides that Alex deserves that – always has deserved that.

They meet up at Alex’ apartment and it isn’t the first time Ross has been there, but it feels foreign anyway. Not much has changed, there’s a new television and more bar stools than before, but besides that it has the same creamy walls and the same ugly, old couch as when he helped him move all the stuff in.

He uses his own key, doesn’t bother with knocking or ringing the bell, and lets himself in. He shrugs out of his coat and doesn’t bother with his shoes as he opens the door of the hall. He doesn’t spot Alex at first, just sees the brown couch, that he both loves and hates. He looks at the posters on the wall and they’re of footballers everyone knows, they’re of Pelé, Maradonna and Gullit; they’re new.

The posters keep him occupied for just a moment, before his eyes trail off towards the big glass window, showing off the entire city. It’s raining and Ross feels like it’s oddly fitting with his mood and the atmosphere in the apartment.

He has never particularly liked the city of Birmingham. It is too gloomy, too different from Liverpool to him, to feel even vaguely at home. Because he has to admit that he has accepted the streets of Liverpool as his home. It took a while, it took ages, but eventually, just like Everton and he, Liverpool and Ross clicked.

Birmingham feels like a prison as soon as Ross steps off the plane. Alex doesn’t pick him up from the airport and he thinks nothing of it, until he misses the feeling of arms wrapped around him and fingers trailing along his elbows. He thinks nothing of it, until he stands in the middle of Alex’ apartment and sees no sign of him.

He thinks ‘alright, okay’ when it’s not and makes himself a cup of tea. He moves around the kitchen like it’s his own and he knows that should feel weird, but it doesn’t – it feels oddly comforting and he can’t help the way the corners of his mouth go up slightly when he puts the cup of tea to his lips.

It takes Alex another two hours to get to his own apartment and he is drunk off his ass when he finally does come in. Ross hopes, prays, that no paparazzi has managed to grab a picture of him in this state, before his thoughts get violently interrupted by Alex stumbling into the kitchen and pushing over a bar stool.

Ross puts his hands on Alex’ shoulders – feels some kind of déjà vu when he places warm palms on the soaked wet skin of the other’s shoulders. The look that Alex gives him breaks his heart and makes him feel like he isn’t the only one who sees Birmingham as a prison more than a home.

Later they don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about how Alex cried on Ross’ shoulder for a solid hour before Ross hushed him and brought him to bed and tucked him in. They don’t talk about how unhappy Alex looked in that moment and how desperate his movements were. They don’t talk about the way Ross pressed a kiss to his forehead that lasted too long to be solely friendly.

Instead Alex just smiles at him in the morning, while he’s nursing a cup of tea and a killer hangover, even though Ross can see the cracks in his smile now they’re face to face. He says nothing, but he knows Alex doesn’t bleed royal Birmingham blue – just like Ross doesn’t bleed for Everton.

+

2010 is the year everything goes right and wrong at the same time.

Everton loses their top five position, but Birmingham City enters the first division again and does amazing for their standards. Ross hasn’t doubted Alex, not for a second, because he still remembers the same boy who trained with him until the deep of the night, but he hadn’t expected the whole team to pull through to a ninth place as soon as they came back in the league.

Everton gets eighth place and Ross knows it’s partly his fault. He hasn’t been performing as he should, hasn’t been improving as people said he would. Everyone around him seems to have accelerated, leaving him being in their dust, coughing and trying to keep his head up.

Alex is no exception to it. It reminds Ross a little bit of the time when Alex first told him the news of his signing at Birmingham City. It reminds Ross a little of how he felt back then. Him being a little too tall for his school uniform and not quite as secure in his football boots, smiling wide but feeling like something inside him turned to ash.

It feels exactly like then when Alex calls him on Skype and asks him for a drum roll. He gives it to Alex, laughs a little, because he hasn’t seen his friend so happy in such a long time and it’s nice to see him smile this wide.

Alex almost screams it at him and Ross only hears the volume at first, before the words actually get meaning. Arsenal wants him. He signed for Arsenal. Arsenal.

And Ross is happy for him, god, he is happy for him and he wants to hug Alex and whisper congratulations to him, but there’s something else heavy in the pit of his stomach. Something that gnaws away at him, eats away at him slowly, bit by bit – each time a transfer offer comes in that’s even worse than the one before.

His agent has been looking at transfer offers for him for a while now, a year at least, but he hasn’t wanted to say ‘yes’ to anything, he hasn’t seen a contract yet that would be better than Everton. Not now he has finally gotten comfortable there and mastered a first team spot.

He doesn’t want West Ham or Stoke City, he wants Manchester United or Chelsea, he wants Arsenal. He wants the Emirates Stadium to explode around him into chants of his name, chants made for him, wants to deliver goals and victories for a club like that. For a club that only seems to get better, even if they aren’t always winners. He wants to be able to say he would fight for a club with tooth and fist, bleed.

He smiles at Alex and hopes that through the screen of the computer the cracks are hidden.

+

Alex tells him about Arsenal.

His eyes light up when he talks about how he felt different when he first pulled on the red shirt. How it didn’t only feel different, but how it was different. He describes how Birmingham paled in comparison to Arsenal. How Birmingham has its narrow streets and few loyal fans who would die for the club (more than he would fight for it). Birmingham with its switching seasons, one season second division and first division another. Birmingham that can’t get close to this.

Ross wants to ask what ‘this’ is, but he has a suspicion and he doesn’t know if he wants it confirmed or not. He looks Alex in the eye when he talks about Arsenal until the words became more just sounds than sentences.

Ross thinks he understands, maybe not fully, not as long as he has the weight of the number eight on the back of a blue shirt, but at least a little bit.

It’s Arsenal. It’s the Gunners. It’s Arsenal with the fans who call themselves Gooners and sit in the stands and make chants for each person that brings their team to victory. It’s Arsenal that has played first division football for ages and hasn’t been relegated nearly as often.

It’s a new beginning. For Alex.

Ross notices one thing during their conversation. He notices one thing that glares at him through his computer screen and that’s the way Alex seems just so, so happy. When he asks him about it, not in words, but with a look, Alex nods.

He is happy, he is. He hasn’t been this happy in months, he says.

Ross is happy for him too, he is, he really is (or so he says).

+

SENDER: R. Van der Boog (AFC AJAX)

SUBJECT: SEASON 10/11 - ENQUIRY LOAN R. HORNBY #8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks sm for reading !!!


	4. far too dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: none

The club has gone through three captains since Ross has been there, but Phil Neville is something else. Ross thinks he was born to be a captain, because when he steps up and takes the captain’s armband from David Weird, he doesn’t shake underneath its weight.

Ross has never touched the band – he is no captain – but he imagines the black fabric brings along more than just a title. He imagines it being heavy beneath the pressure of spirited souls and the passion of the fans that sit through ninety minutes of rain more often than not.

He is the first captain Ross gets time to get used to – the others passed the responsibility along each year but Neville keeps to it and he can’t help but admire that.

Ross doesn’t know if he would ever be ready to be a captain, or even a vice. He doesn’t know if he could shoulder even more weight on his shoulders, but Neville can – he can and he shows it every day. It’s the reason why when he has to make the decision he goes to him first.

They are not friends. They don’t text each other silly things in the evening or come over for a casual round of gaming and beer that tastes like shit but gets them competitive. Ross has Phil’s number, but only for emergencies and not because he wants to call and talk – except… maybe this time.

He simply asks to talk to his captain and Phil replies he will be there in twenty. He hangs up before Ross can make sure that he knows where he lives. Instead he waits, he waits on the couch before he can’t sit down anymore and starts pacing around.

This man is older than him. Everything of him screams experience from the lines in his face to the scars on his knees and shins from too many rough tackles. Ross doesn’t doubt that he can relate, he only doubts if he can understand.

Phil does know where he lives and he makes it in fifteen minutes instead of twenty – he must have broken the speed limit for that, Ross realizes later and wonders to himself how desperate he’d sounded through the phone. He looks him up and down and he can’t help but twitch a little under the stare before Phil drops his gaze.

The exact moment the other breaks their eye contact, Ross feels something in him break just a little. Tiny cracks in his glass armor. Maybe because this man who he does not know, not really, seems to care more – know more – than some people he has known for years.

Phil Neville looks like a man who knows what’s going on all the time, but even now he looks unnerved. He looks like he doesn’t quite understand, but, Ross notices – heart clenching, but wants to. So Ross invites him in, puts the kettle on and leads him to the couch and the remote and his shaking hands while showing him how the TV turns on. 

His captain is silent and looks at him – doesn’t prod, doesn’t start, doesn’t question and he is grateful. He starts talking then, he talks when the kettle starts whistling and keeps talking even when Phil mutes the TV to hear him better. He tells him, perhaps a teammate but still a near stranger, about how he feels like he doesn’t think he is needed at Everton anymore, how he wants to open new doors but has no keys and how he has gotten an offer he doesn’t know if he should accept.

Ross doesn’t say to him that he doesn’t want Everton to be his last train stop, but he thinks of it anyway. He thinks of it when he focuses his eyes on the TV where pictures flash by but have no sound accompanying them. He thinks of it when he looks at Phil and the lines in his face and the scars on the back of his hands. He thinks: ‘I don’t want to be here forever’ and ‘did you use to think that too?’.

Phil doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t say anything for a while and just lets Ross spill all his feelings, emotions and troubles onto the carpet of his still too empty home, even if he has been living in this city for years. He misses his parents’ house and the comfort of the grass field behind his neighborhood. He misses Alex and cold nights where they kicked ball after ball into the back of the net while laughing, because football was fun. He misses Alex who texted him back within a day instead of having to wait a week for one word replies.

Somewhere Ross understands because it’s Arsenal. Alex went from Birmingham to Arsenal and the change is big. The change is – is nothing that Ross can imagine because all he has ever known is Everton, but he knows it must have put stress on Alex. Stress to perform for the infamous Arsène Wenger. Impress all the players of a team in which his starting eleven spot isn’t yet secure. 

Yet somewhere Ross doesn’t think this is fair. Not to him, not to their friendship, because life is busy but Ross finds time to send Alex a text at least every three days and sometimes Alex doesn’t even manage to send one every week. It hurts because this is the guy who he thought would be there forever and Ross doesn’t know if he is being selfish but – but this isn’t fair, is it?

Phil looks at him for a while before he unmutes the television, changing the channel to something Ross doesn’t recognize at first. That is before he focuses on the words the reporter is saying. It’s a sports gossip channel and it seems low budget from the way the sound keeps cutting out – he hasn’t ever seen it before.

There are flashy montages of players on the screen and for one second, a fleeting second, Ross sees Alex’ face flash by, but it’s gone too quick for him to check to make sure. The camera focuses on Fernando Torres’ face before the reporter butts in and says things Ross didn’t think they allowed on national television.

They’re not curse words or downright insults. They’re nasty remarks wrapped up in a nice, little story and Ross can almost imagine the red bow around it all – ‘Torres… a man who is really worth 58 million? Or a mistake by the Blues?’. Ross hopes Torres doesn’t hear these words, because he doesn’t know the man – isn’t anywhere near his level yet – but no one deserves this. He hopes a little that he does good with Chelsea, perhaps just to spite the media – el niño’s revenge.

Phil places his hand on his shoulder, his hand clammy and warm – too warm –, and for a second he had forgotten his captain had been sitting on his couch, in his house, with his hand on the remote control. The same he uses to turn the television off again. Ross wonders how long ago Phil himself was on a show like that.

His words are quiet, almost whispered – as if he struggles with them himself. ‘‘Are you ready to deal with that?’’

He looks at his own knees and his shins and the back of his hands – scar free.

+

He looks up pictures of Amsterdam online, thinks ‘a city like this can be the escape I need’ and ‘do I tell Smith?’.

+

SENDER: B. Kenwright (EVERTON FC)

RE: SEASON 10/11 - ENQUIRY LOAN R. HORNBY #8

[ACCEPTED]

+

It’s when he lays in bed that the decision hits him the hardest. In the dark where his face is hidden and his body is buried beneath blanket after blanket. It’s then that he truly understands what he is going to do. He is going to uproot himself from the only club he’s ever known.

It’s weird; a strange feeling pooling in his stomach, making his skin crawl but his eyes glint. It makes him nauseous, because of the unknown, but gets him excited for new chances, new meetings – new life.

He looks at the lines on his palms, thinks about that time when he was five and wanted to be a keeper but he was afraid of the ball knocking his teeth out. He thinks about how silly that is now. Now that he stands on the field, all the way in the front, facing elbows and knees and furious shouts almost every match. Now that he realized it’s not the ball you should be really afraid of in the world of football.

+

Ross knows how football works. He knows it’s sweat, tears and blood. He understands it’s practicing every day, even when you aren’t at the stadium to run laps and do stretches. He has been living that life for years now and he’s no fool – he knows time is limited and that sometimes the rest just fades in comparison to football. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with everything you don’t return home to.

Yet, Ross folds his hands in his lap as he watches the flight numbers go by on the board, it’s only pre-season. It’s beginning of July and while 2010 has been going for months, football has been at a stop. It’s the time to sit down, gather your team as a manager and start planning out strategies and formations – it’s not the time for players to work themselves into the ground before they can even use their strengths in an actual game with no practice jerseys.

It’s pre-season and it shouldn’t be busy enough already for Alex to not reply to him for six straight days – not yet. Ross texts him congratulations when he gets subbed in the twenty-seventh minute in Arsenal’s second practice match, texts him a funny picture of a cat and a koala – no reply.

Ross guesses it shouldn’t matter that much. He shouldn’t feel so dependent on a person who doesn’t seem to need him as much as he needs him. He should be able to focus on his new apartment and new club, new teammates, new friends – he knows enough to understand that Alex is doing the very same.

He looks at his phone a last time, scrolls through an one-sided text conversation, before he can finally board his plane. He feels an odd kind of empty; full of emotion (enough) but somehow still so hollow, as if something is missing.  
He switches his phone to airplane mode, pushes the ear buds into his ears and stuffs it away. He has a plane to catch, a language to learn and a club to prove himself to – everything (-one) can wait on him for a change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u sm for reading !!!


	5. i want to be buried / burnt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: none

The Netherlands is humid air and people being too busy to watch where they’re going and bicycles being parked everywhere.

He arrives on a dry day that has everyone in shorts and t-shirts and makes him stand out in his sweater and sneakers. Ross knows he looks like a tourist, the fact is confirmed when he catches a glimpse of himself in a glass door – and he is, a little bit.

He doesn’t speak this language, he doesn’t know every crook or corner, he has never really been here before and now – now this has to be his home for a year. He doesn’t quite know how to feel about that, but he hopes he finds out.

His phone remains on airplane mode when he gets into a taxi to his new apartment.

+

Ross realizes quickly that Amsterdam is a little bit like Liverpool and a little bit like Birmingham, it’s a little bit of both. Except the air is light and it’s easier for him to breathe. 

Maybe it is because these four story high canal houses were built in a time that brought wealth and joy to all: a golden age. Maybe it is because this old city can bring him joy as well in the way he has no healing wounds he can easily reopen around here. Maybe.

Practice is tomorrow.

+

The mentality is different here, Ross finds on the first day of practice. It’s less of parking the bus, fiercer; attacking at every chance you get. The coach calls it reaction football, but Ross doesn’t know if he agrees completely.

He doesn’t quite think that the unstoppable force he wants his squad to form should be seen as a reaction eleven. It’s not, he decides, as he watches players with faces he doesn’t have names for do drills. It’s a destructive squad.

And perhaps this is what defines the Dutch squads, on the national and club side. He thinks of Bert van Marwijk, who he only has heard stories about and seen interviews of and never actually met. He shapes his attack carefully, puts in Van Persie, Sneijder and Robben to form the deadly trio up front and it’s not a secret in the coaching world that it is the formation he wants to bring to the World Cup.

The very same World Cup to which Ross is not invited besides getting yet another normal ticket to sit in the tribune. Ross thought about it for a while, painting a white and red flag on his cheeks and wearing a jersey his father had bought somewhere in the ‘80’s and yet – those very same thoughts brought a bitter taste to his mouth.

It’s not as if he expected to be selected for England’s national team. He hadn’t even expected to be listed as a reserve or a substitute, but still somewhere he had hoped. Somewhere he had hoped that he would have been noticed, been seen and been called upon. He guesses it’s the dream of every footballer to defend their nation in the biggest football competition held. He guesses that for some that dream just doesn’t come true – and for a moment he feels like a little boy again, wishing for the stars and only getting a football for Christmas and being told to practice if he wants to reach the top.

So that is what he plans to do. He watches the ball in front of the feet of a teammate he doesn’t know quite yet and decides right there and then, that this will be his fresh start. It might not be Arsenal, but it’s still a different city, even a different league and if he wants to conquer anything at all; he might as well start now. He might as well go for the Eredivisie and try to please the fans of this club. He figures he owes them that.

The coach introduces him quickly and professionally in Dutch to the other players and Ross feels even more unprepared than before. He knows not all of them are Dutch, they can’t be, but still most of them are nodding their heads to the words of their coach. It doesn’t help that he doesn’t even know a single word in Dutch.

Ross says nothing to the coach, Frank de Boer, who talks in English to him, after he dismissed the rest, with a strong Dutch accent. It’s heavy on the words and makes them come out harsher than they should and if there was anything he would use to describe this new squad, this new mentality, this new club, it would be the hard ‘g’s and ‘j’s from de Boer.

+

When he finally turns his phone back on, he has several messages and missed calls. Most of the calls are from his mum and several text messages are ‘good luck’s and ‘will see you soon’s from his Everton teammates and friends, but one missed call stands out. It stands out because he isn’t used to see that number and that name on his recent calls list at all anymore.

Alex Smith (3)

15:32

Ross looks at the name, thinks of the miles and miles and water that is between them now and feels a strong pull in his chest. He doesn’t quite think it’s his heart breaking, because it never truly was Alex’s to shred and tear apart, but he doesn’t know any other way to describe this dull ache he feels.

A dull ache that has been creeping up on him since the day Skype calls became less and less and texting almost didn’t happen anymore. He understands that sometimes you miss someone and they miss you too, but there is just nothing left to talk about; the spark of friendship gone. But he doesn’t quite want to accept that this is it, over and done. He doesn’t want his career to destroy one of the only friendships he has managed to keep for years and yet it seems to be doing just that.

So he calls back.

+

Their conversation is awkward silences instead of comfortable ones and Ross misses the times where they could hang onto the phone for hours with nothing but silence between them, their breathing the only sounds coming over the line.

Ross misses a lot from that time. He misses spending hours in the evening on the grass, sharing passes but also stories and dreams, wishes and ambitions. He misses the time where they could talk without words, only needing to share glances and soft touches of barely there fingertips.

Their conversation is questions of ‘why’ and ‘how’, but Alex never actually gets to the point. Ross knows he wants to ask ‘why didn’t you tell me?’ but instead he says ‘why did you leave for a loan at this time?’. He knows he wants to ask ‘how could you leave England (me)?’ but instead he says ‘how are you adapting?’.

He answers in short one worded replies that he loathes himself for as soon as he hangs up the phone. He missed Alex’s voice, he misses the way his words always meant comfort and he just misses him. Period. And yet, somehow, he can’t find it in himself to ask about Alex and Arsenal, those two are intertwined now, he understands. Somehow he doesn’t quite want to admit that he is losing the grip on his (once) best friend (his maybe something more).

So he says ‘yes, fine’ and ‘I just needed a change’ (a breather). Presses end call, tries not to think about it and instead loses himself in the streets of Amsterdam and Dutch conversations he doesn’t understand, instead of in his own mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u sm for reading !!


	6. my heels cut pavement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: none
> 
> sorry for the late update, they'll be a lot more regular in the future !!

Meeting Nadia is like finding salvation. Nadia Bakker is long dark hair and tanned skin and eyes that remind him of rain clouds. Nadia Bakker is high pitched laughter that somehow isn’t as annoying as it should be and soft hands tangled with his, squeezing and forehead kisses that don’t need to mean anything but what he wants them to.

He meets her when the team has just returned from Austria. A win and a draw under their belts. He likes the dull exhaustion in his bones for some reason. He knows the rest of the team feels the same, but not one of them seems cranky or upset about it. He sees big, white smiles and people clapping friends on the shoulder, whispering congratulations and ‘thank you, you saved our asses back there’.

He likes the atmosphere that hangs in the bus, it makes him smile a little bit, even if no one has said anything to him specifically yet. It isn’t that he isn’t trying, it just is that it is hard. It is hard, because this is not his country and this is not his language and while he knows he isn’t the only one who is not Dutch, it still seems like he is. Even Suarez has managed to grasp the language somehow, although he wonders why he needed any other language than football on the pitch.

They return to the Netherlands and to Amsterdam mostly in silence. The drive is long and bumpy, but somehow almost everyone seems to be able to fall asleep. Ross does too, for the most part, the other half he spends on his phone, scrolling down page after page of football news. There is no mention of what he hopes to find (perhaps his own name, perhaps someone else’s, the one he always looks for), but he does read several headlines that talk about his team, his new team – family, lovingly.

There is a tap on his shoulder and he looks back. Christian Eriksen looks him dead in the eye and it is as much unnerving as it is interesting. They haven’t spoken before and if anyone was to pay attention to him, Ross would have expected it to be Van der Wiel with his wide smiles and easy laughter or Blind with his lively spirit and encouraging speeches. Not the Danish man who didn’t seem to have anything in common with him.

Christian points at something on his phone screen, his seat cracking underneath him when he leans over and grabs the device.

‘Look.’ And so Ross does.

English addition to the Dutch giants just might be enough to get the club their 30th title. Hornby scores against Rapid Boekarest.

When he turns around to say something, anything, to Christian, he has already settled back in his seat, with headphones on and eyes closed so Ross says nothing, just smiles instead.

It has him in a cheerier mood the entire day, something so small that ignites something in the pit of his stomach that makes him feel better than he has in weeks. Better than when he was still in Liverpool, at Everton, under the weight of a blue shirt that was never truly meant to be his. Better than when he hung up the phone with a bitter taste in the back of his mouth and regret heavy in his veins.

It leaves him feeling complete and for once Ross doesn’t see him moving to Ajax, to Amsterdam, to the Netherlands as that much of a mistake. It finally gives him the energy to go looking for a trip home for the winter break. Although he feels ashamed to admit that his mother’s worried voice over the phone hasn’t been enough to make him look for flights back home.

It’s that midday when De Boer had told them to rest, sleep, do anything but exhaust themselves before the season even begins, that he finds himself amongst rows and rows of magazines. He recognizes some as typical English travelling magazines, picks them up before he puts them down again. He goes along rack after rack, picking up Spanish, Italian and Dutch magazines – as if he still is looking for a destination (and in some ways, he is).

That’s when he bumps into her and it isn’t love at first sight. It isn’t even lust at first sight. Maybe it was just mutual agreement, Ross will think later, not being able to clearly recall through the haze of embarrassment and oh god, she fell to the ground from the force of the knock. 

He does remember clearly how he was struggling with the few Dutch words and sentences he does know, trying to explain how he wasn’t trying to assault her and oh god, he did not want this to be some kind of scandal – how bad is the Dutch sport media anyway? Ross wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

But she brushed him off, raised herself up again and gave him a smile. Fluent English coming out and introducing herself and ‘aren’t you Ross Hornby?’ and Ross hoping he could hush this case with an autograph or a hug, but all she asked for was an interview. He doesn’t know why he agreed, but he did and in the end it was as much a mistake as moving to Amsterdam was – it wasn’t.

Later he will realize that meeting Nadia Bakker in the travel agency in some back alley in Amsterdam was yet another step towards his new life. A life where he doesn’t have to wait on a man who doesn’t want to realize his feelings. Where he doesn’t have to be the golden boy for Everton FC. Where he doesn’t have to be Atlas to thousands and thousands of fans, staff, teammates.

He is getting better.

+

Ajax is a lot different and it isn’t anything Ross didn’t know before. It isn’t anything he hasn’t told himself already, in front of the mirror in the mornings where he woke up to the Dutch traffic from the street below. On the couch watching the sport media analyze his arrival and his departure with a language barrier between, relying on a skill of reading body language, which he never really possessed.

It isn’t anything he doesn’t know, doesn’t understand; isn’t something he stays oblivious to, but maybe it is truly realizing it that makes him stop – falter.

Perhaps it’s truly getting dropped head first into the season, losing the Cruijff dish to FC Twente in the first game they play. A bitter defeat that leaves a sour taste in the mouth of all. The fans, the manager, the players and Ross has felt loss before, but he isn’t quite sure if any of these players have ever faced defeats. Maybe not with a team this aggressive and eager to win, win, win. It is a game full of yellow cards and a red. It was a terrible, terrible game, Ross tells his mother on the phone later, it was Dutch.

Perhaps it’s the euphoria of getting through the first and second round of the KNVB cup. It’s a massive event that holds thousands in its grip for weeks and Ross never really has experienced anything like this. Not even the one UEFA match he got to play is on par with this.

The moment they defeat Roda JC in the third round, a small win but it still feels so (too) good, Ross gets a call from Nadia. Her voice is soft and small, unlike the fierce and strong tone she had in that travel agency weeks before, and it startles him for a moment. It makes him stutter for a slight second when she congratulates him and he isn’t able to match her voice with a face.

He has never been great on the phone; a silent, awkward phone call connecting him with England reminding him of such (a faint echo he tries to drown out, but he never succeeds).

She laughs, sounds a little bit more like herself, as she reminds him of her name and he smiles too and he guesses she hears it in his voice as he apologizes and asks her how he is.

‘Shouldn’t I be asking you that, hungry for goals Hornby?’ Her voice is light, still soft but feels like it’s slowly regaining what it lost.

He laughs, catches his breath – falters in a good way this time. ‘It was one goal.’

She laughs again, her voice melodious. He decides he likes her laugh. Then she stops, sounds more serious than before but still with a ring and an echo of smiley eyes and laughter lines. ‘It was beautiful, legends would bow for goals like that. Hitting the back of the net like you did.’

‘They wouldn’t.’ He tells her, because he is sure they wouldn’t. De Boer hadn’t given him more than a pat on the shoulder and he swears only Christian was genuinely happy for him, even when Vertonghen patted him on the back – he guesses that’s just what captains are supposed to do (even if Phil never patted him on the back, ever).

‘Nice thought, though, yeah?’

Yeah, he thinks, but doesn’t say.

+

They arrange a meeting for the interview. The twenty-second of December. Nadia comes up with the idea, assures him how great it will be when Ajax wins against AZ in the KNVB cup and how they can talk about that. He looks at the phone in his hands, wonders how she can be so confident, so sure, his team will win, but doesn’t protest, just says ‘okay’ and hangs up.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

At first everything is fine. The twenty-first rolls around and Ross isn’t even in the starting eleven for the game, but he has a good feeling about it all. The ArenA has filled itself with every shade of red possible He can see AZ red, but most of all he can see Ajax red.

It has always been such a stark contrast with the Everton blue, which he got so used to seeing on himself. Such a contrast that sometimes he still has to stop and check it’s really him when he walks passed windows or mirrors. Is this him wearing this shirt, that doesn’t match his eyes, on his back? It is, but sometimes it’s hard to believe.

Hard to believe that he is finally somewhere else than in Liverpool, trying to prove himself to fans of Everton, who deserve more than him. (Sometimes he looks at the jersey and thinks maybe it changed to this kind of red from all the wounds this eleven seems to carry from rough tackles and pointy elbows).

The team, his team, plays brilliantly. They’re quick, aggressive, exactly what their trainer has been trying to stamp into their brains. Attack them before they attack you. Finish them before they finish you. The age old dilemma of kill or be killed – all Ajax does is kill, kill, kill. It’s a banger of a goal which puts them to 1-0 and it was all so brilliant, shining too bright for Ross to always keep up.

Until it isn’t. Until everything turns bleak and everything pales. Until it seems like the time slows and all he can feel is the cold air beating against his cheeks, his nose, his forehead (reminding him strangely of home). Until all he can see is a fan jumping down from the stands, rolling over the field in a fiery Ajax red jersey, before letting themselves fall on the AZ keeper, Esteban.

The fan does nothing much, just stands there, weak and shaking, no doubt drunk. The fan does nothing much, but Esteban does. Esteban takes one look at the Ajax red and his boot hits target, once, twice. The fan bleeds Ajax red, Ross is certain, but it doesn’t show on the jersey – becomes only apparent when it drips on the field; green turning red. A twisted up Christmas message with the holidays so close.

Esteban gets a red and then everyone goes wild and all Ross can do is sit silently, unmoving, on the bench as everyone around him bursts into screams and yells and gestures. The fans go mad, they scream and cry and both sides try to let their yells be louder than the other. It feels like a war raging on the pitch.

It ends with the players of AZ returning to the dressing room and refusing to finish the game that they were losing. Someone holds onto Esteban as they all go back through the tunnel, nobody holds onto the fan; the medic holding them only by the tips of his gloves, handling them like they are toxic.

Ross looks at De Boer, who doesn’t give anything away with his facial expression and has his hands sunk deep in his pockets. Ross looks at Christian, who looks at him, and they both have twin expressions of disbelief, but neither share that piece of information.

The game ends. It ends before half time. It ends before either side really had a fair chance of playing. It ends before they can really give football its meaning back through their passes and shots and tackles.

He doesn’t meet Nadia that night, she doesn’t call him out on it.

+

Ross knows it’s foolish to wait for something to come when he knows it won’t be delivered and yet… he’s hopeful.

Somehow he still has the final shreds of hope that he clings onto with all his might. He looks at his phone, waits for a phone call or a text from a number he should have deleted, but never did (the same hope interfering when his thumb hovered over the delete button).

Alex takes his last bits of hope, knows they can’t be shredded anymore and burns them instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u sm for reading !! (dw smith is not disappearing anytime soon + this is not suddenly set around ross/oc dw)


	7. tell us about

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: none

They’re hanging out with the team one night during Winter break. The match still heavy in their veins and clear in their minds, so much that De Boer made Jan Vertonghen gather them up like children to have a good night in.

And Ross – Ross actually feels good with these people. Most of them are still as young as him and he finally doesn’t feel like a private hanging out with generals. He isn’t the odd one out and he isn’t their supposed-to-be-savior. They’re more like a team and less like an one man machine. And as he laughs with Gregory and Toby about the latest comedy films, he feels at home.

He believes people can make their homes, believes that they aren’t made for them, but more so made by them. Ross thinks that maybe he can make a home on the couch between Christian and Gregory, clutching a pillow and a bowl of popcorn, trying to pay attention to Bend it like Beckham, but failing to when laughter over takes most of the people in the room.

To his left Eyong and Theo are in a discussion that makes their voices rise so much that eventually all the eyes are on them. Theo blinks at them when he turns around, while Eyong just shakes his head and puts his hands on his knees. Theo raises his eyebrow, the Dutchman meeting most of their eyes before asking them what they’re looking at.

‘You guys,’ Toby says from where he lays on the carpet. ‘What are you even arguing about?’

Theo rolls his eyes, mirroring Eyong’s position without even realizing and no one really dares to call the midfielder out on it. He doesn’t fill the centre attacking midfielder position most of the time without a reason.

‘Enoh here says he wants to go back to Africa, leave Amsterdam!’ Theo sounds offended, sounds like it isn’t anything he can imagine doing and no one would suspect the man joined the club at the same time as Ross, as much a newbie as him, but acting like a senior.

Jan looks the midfielder up and down, says calmly and in his, what everyone dubs as, captain voice. ‘What’s the problem with Enoh having plans for the future, Janssen?’

‘Aren’t you annoyed with it though? He finally got out of Capetown and now! Now he wants to go back. You would never leave Ajax, would you, Jan?’ Theo’s eyes are wide and even though he is older, older by years than Ross, he seems somehow younger. In his tone, in his face, in the way he holds himself and the set of his shoulders.

Christian shrugs and Ross feels his shoulder move against his own. (Straight and strong unlike his own, he feels small for a moment, before the other speaks; sounds as young as himself again). ‘Well, are you going to play here forever, Theo? We can’t all be Gerrard or Casillas or… Jan, you know.’

Theo gets quiet at that and they can all hear Jules, one of the girls from the film they all forgot about, say loud and clear: ‘It’s a sign!’

And maybe it is, but, as Ross learnt in Liverpool, is learning in Amsterdam, and will learn in London, the future is unpredictable – unpredictable and pliant

Because in the world of football you can never give anyone your word – what seems impossible one day, can be most likely the next. On the field and in the dressing room, nothing is set in stone besides the end results of the match, which come back to haunt every player who didn’t score.

Because in that moment they don’t know that Casillas will leave Real Madrid in 2015 or that Gerrard will say goodbye to Liverpool and trade in his captaincy for the MLS. Because in that moment they don’t know that both Jan and Theo will leave at the end of 2012, leave Ajax behind and start other careers, at Hotspur, at Vitesse. They don’t know – they are blissfully ignorant, but later Ross will look back at it and wish they had known all this time

(– but they didn’t).

+

The ArenA is the heart of Amsterdam, the entire Netherlands.

It reminds him of Wembley, reminds him of England white and people screaming names that would never be forgotten. It reminds him of watching World Cups on TV as a little kid with a too big of a jersey on, and seeing masses and masses of people with red and white paint on their faces. It reminds him of the people pounding their own chests in the rhythm of their hearts (‘England! England! England!). It reminds him of home.

It reminds him of home so much that he can feel the ache in his chest, in his heart and veins and bones. He misses England, even when things seem to be okay now, good - better. He misses his mother’s pancakes and the rain that is the same, but feels different when playing on English soil.

It hits him in the face. Not as much a simple slap as it feels like a freight train colliding with his mind. Homesickness.

Ross places his hand over his heart (feels the rhythm beneath his fingertips and the inside of his palm, hears chants along the rush of his blood in his ears – England! England! England!) and aches. English white blood trying to convert itself to be a color it was never supposed to become – orange.

It’s the first time in years that Ross wonders why he wasn’t good enough to be selected for the international friendlies. It’s the first time in years that he questions why the coach hadn’t thought of him, a place in the team or on the bench. It’s not the first time that he closes his eyes, denies, denies, denies and tries to forget through a dreamless sleep.

(He will paint himself orange if he has to, white insides be damned – deny, deny, deny).

+

Ross’ own match against Saloniki has just finished as Nadia calls him. He is high on adrenaline, goosebumps spreading along his arms and legs and the sweat slowly drying on his forehead and the back of his neck. The coach had believed in him, giving him a spot instead of Lindgren and then he was the one who hadn’t believed it.

A champions league qualification match and he got to play. He’s proven himself, he knows that. He has worked himself to the bone, has made sure his calves ache every time he leaves practice to show he can, he can and he will fight for this club, even if it isn’t his.

It’s much like how Everton was at first. Everton with its hard mouthed Englishmen and blue shirts worn like a second skin. Except this is not Everton, this is Ajax with its brash Dutchmen and crimson shirts that are worn more like armor.

He still goes at it, tears himself down and plays the ball up to the front, meeting the legs of the other strikers and his brothers in arms. He still makes sure to give himself a hundred percent and the coach had acknowledged him. Playing in the Eredivisie is a good experience, an experience he wouldn’t want to trade, because every country has its own way and own mannerisms and those of England stand stark against those in the Netherlands. And yet… he never expected to be counted on during big competitions like an UEFA league game and yet there he was, playing the full ninety minutes like it was nothing and he wasn’t just a loan player.

He’s so overridden by emotions that he almost starts bawling right where he stands in the hall, clutching his phone to his ear and trying to calm his hammering heart.

‘You were amazing,’ Nadia breathes over the phone. Her voice once again merely a whisper, but less vulnerable and it doesn’t make his hairs stand up straight. ‘You truly were, Hornby.’ And she doesn’t sound as surprised or unbelieving as her words make it seem. She sounds confident, confident in the way she was sure his team would overmaster AZ – she had been wrong then, but she isn’t now.

‘Thanks,’ His voice is rough around the edges, harsh and it hadn’t even been a win, just a draw. It makes him wonder how ruined his voice and muscles would feel if they had a victory in the UCL. ‘Yeah, thanks.’ He can’t stop himself from grinning really, especially not with the way his teammates keep passing him and patting him on the shoulder or ruffling his hair – he feels accepted by every one of them and it’s good, it’s nice.

‘How about the interview now?’ Nadia suggests and he nods before he realizes she can’t see him.

‘Yeah, alright… yeah.’

+

Nadia asks to meet him in her office and he tells her he will be there as soon as he can. It’s not a lie, but it’s not the entire truth either.

He takes his time to undress and stand beneath the shower, a chant of Dutch words and the club’s anthem being sung at either side of him and when he is pulling on his tee, Christian slings an arm around his shoulders.

The Dane presses himself fully against him, bumps his nose against Ross’ temple before letting go and continuing his conversation with Toby like nothing had happened. It makes him stop, the white of his t-shirt the same color as his knuckles, and wonder.

He wonders about Christian, but more than that he wonders why he feels so empty. It’s not weird for players to be affectionate with each other, tactile. Although, it are mostly the players from the southern parts of the world, who are so easy about it, and not someone like Christian, not someone like Ross, who grew up with cold winters and rainy summers instead of warm weather the entire year (makes the little sunlight they soak up even more precious, desperatly trying to get it stuck in their skin).

It still makes him stop, wait and watch the fabric of his shirt from where he is gripping it almost tight enough to rip it apart. It leaves him confused about the feeling that rests in the pit of his stomach, something that swirls and twists and pulls at him from the inside.

It’s alike to homesickness, but Ross knows it isn’t that. He knows, because he has come to terms with the heavy, burning sensation of missing the grey skies of England and its buzzing street, that hides behind his ribs and settles itself next to his heart.

This is something else. This is something that makes his breath get caught, makes him blink to focus his gaze that stays blurry anyway. This is not missing something; this is missing someone.

And he knows who and he knows why, but denying is a skill he has mastered for a long time now.

+

‘Ross!’ Nadia opens her office door for him and her arms in tow. Her smile is infectious and she looks gorgeous in the soft lights. It makes the sharp edges of her chin and cheekbones a little softer, more round, and it makes her seem like an angel in disguise.

He grins back at her, can’t seem to help himself, and wraps his arms around her as well. He doesn’t quite know why or how they have gotten close this quick, this easy, but here they are. Sometimes he forgets she is a reporter and he is a footballer and really anything he says to her can be used against him the next morning, flashing as a beacon in the form of a headline in the newspapers; he doesn’t like to think of the possibility.

‘Come in, come in, make yourself comfortable and uh – we can start whenever.’ She ushers him inside, throws her hair back over her shoulder and hurries back to her desk, leaving Ross to stand in the middle of a neat, little office with no clue what he is supposed to do.

He has done interviews plenty of times before, but there is always a club official who shadows him during those, tells him what to say and what to keep hidden away in the smallest corner of his affairs. Here, there’s no one with him. Here, he has no shadow who breaths down his neck and corrects every single mistake he might make before he actually does. Prevent rather than correct.

It’s both terrifying and freeing at the same time. So he takes a breath and pulls the zipper of his coat down. He has everything prepared, even went through it with both Theo and Christian and they had said it was ‘cool and edgy for the kids’ before bursting down into laughter over celebratory drinks in the dressing room.

‘Alright,’ Nadia speaks up, a pen now in her hand along with a clipboard as she smiles at him and points towards the couch. ‘So, it’s not much and it might not seem professional, but well –‘

Ross holds up his hand and shakes his head and went to sit down, because okay, maybe he isn’t the only one nervous about doing their first standalone interview. ‘This is fine, don’t worry.’

It was really, Ross remembers sleeping on Alex’ couch when he was seventeen and how there had been several stains that Alex had explained as his and his brother’s adventures with Whiskey – he hadn’t asked any details. The feeling in his stomach flares up a bit at the memory as his fingers dig into the nice brown leather of Nadia’s couch.

She snaps him out of it with a simple ‘alright them, hungry for goals Hornby’ and the tapping of her pen against paper.

The first part of the interview goes exactly like he practiced it. He tells her about how it’s such an honor to play for the Dutch giants and how his teammates have been supportive and amazing. He elaborates on his time at Everton without ever mentioning the constant anxiety that gnawed at his mind and how that will surely return when he returns in the summer. She laughs at the lame jokes he manages to make and nods along to his story, stopping in between every question to allow him a break and it’s alright, he can do interviews like this all the time.

Then his phone buzzes and he really though he told everyone he was busy that afternoon and couldn’t answer any messages. Nadia looks at the phone on the table the exact moment he does and he manages to smile sheepishly before she brushes him off and tells him to just check his phone – ‘it’s fine, I need a break from writing anyway’.

Figuring it’s probably Theo or maybe Luis, because he never liked it when they spoke in English; always complaining how it went to fast for him and he couldn’t understand any of it, he picks it up, ready to type out a short response with a promise of a call back later.

Except it’s not Theo, it’s not Luis, it isn’t even Christian or Jan or his mother.

Alex Smith (14:34): hey, mate, I saw you play. You were amazing, maybe we will meet each other in the ucl, huh?

He looks at his phone, looks up at Nadia and back at his phone again.

Alex Smith (14:37): mum has been asking when you’ll come over for supper again, don’t make her wait, you twat

It feels like he is swallowing lead and as if there are stones resting in his stomach. He feels sick to the bone, sick to the stomach.

Alex Smith (14:41): I want to see you again too

He is missing Alex, Alex, Alex, Alex – there is no denying it anymore. Not when a few text messages can make him forget what happened between them and how he merely became an every-now-and-again in the background when Arsenal picked him up. Not when a few text messages make his heart constrict and his mind spin and his vision go hazy.

‘Ross,’ Nadia starts. ‘Is everything okay?’ And he wants to tell her.

He wants to tell someone, anyone who wants to listen, because this is a pressure, a burden, heavy on his shoulders that he can’t keep lifting himself and Alex doesn’t seem to really be around enough to give him a helping hand.

But she is a journalist, the pen is still in between her thumb and index finger and the clipboard with the paper is still in her lap.

‘Ross,’ She starts again, voice soft and understanding almost. ‘We can stop this at any time.’

She looks at him and he looks at her and it’s like something clicks and falls into place when their eyes meet. An expression dawns on her face, one of understanding and yet not quite, more one of wanting to understand.

It’s enough, and he spills his story. Let’s it all go and spill out from his mouth into the vastness of the room and towards Nadia. He doesn’t think about the repercussions this can have for him, he doesn’t see every single way this can turn sour for him, but then again, he doesn’t see the way how she puts down the pen and the clipboard onto the table and comes to sit next to him.

His phone lights up when he is in the middle of recounting a distant Skype call and he doesn’t pay attention to it, too lost in sparkling eyes he hasn’t seen in months, if he doesn’t count the TV.

Alex Smith (15:05): Give me a chance?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i said i would update regularly, i lied, sorry, i had this done for months but i just?? tough times


	8. i'm going down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: none

Later, Ross arrives home to a bare apartment and let’s himself grief for a love that never was and miss a friend who was never supposed to leave. 

It’s silly, he thinks as he watches the tiles of his apartment. It’s silly, no – pathetic, it’s pathetic that he is so messed up by a relationship that never became more than friendship (just sometimes it felt like more, sometimes it felt like the forehead kisses meant more and sometimes he really wished they had become more, but-). 

He feels like his entire being is being turned inside out. It feels as if his skin is ripping apart and it’s like clay breaking, desperately trying to hold onto the form of a vase (human), but wanting to give into the force (break). 

For a moment, he wants to curse Alex Smith and all he has done to him in his life. He was getting better, he was slowly getting over it, at a snail pace perhaps, but still making meters. He was leaving behind that part of his life. The part that is always taunting him, haunting him, just out of his reach and no matter how hard he tries, his fingers don’t even graze the edge. 

And somehow, he is back to this. He’s back to sitting against the wood of his front door with his t-shirt sticking to his back from sweat (from having ran up every single stair and back down again and up again – adrenaline pumping, trying to forget). 

Here, he’s again with his mouth pulled into a frown and his arms wrapped around his knees; feeling alone, desperate. 

This is not fair. 

+

Ross doesn’t think he could ever truly curse Alex. 

He couldn’t, because there had been too many warm summer nights in which they shared too much to every deny. 

He couldn’t, because he remembers laughing over soda cans and getting lost in a maze of his own thoughts and the other’s eyes. 

+

Ross does three things the moment he wakes up. 

The first is checking his phone and his messages. His fingers are trembling, his hands shaking and his mouth feels dry with his tongue seemingly made out of cotton. He tries to swallow (swallow worries, doubts, pain, everything, down), bites his lips and unlocks his phone.

Alex Smith (19:28): I know I fucked up, mate, sorry we don’t talk anymore

Alex Smith (20:04): I guess it’s my fault really, right? 

Alex Smith (23:09): we ended on a bad note, Ross, I don’t want to end there

The second is deleting every single message Alex has ever sent him. 

He feels some kind of dull feeling descend upon him when he deletes messages all the way from last year, when things were better, not amazing like they used to be, but okay. He feels a slight ache for times that used to be and will never be again, but he deletes them and they’re gone and there’s nothing left to grief for.

The third is ending it right there, right then. 

+

Ross avoids his own eyes in the mirror while he brushes his teeth; something tells him that when he meets his own eyes in his reflection, that this calm facade, that he is trying to force upon himself, will break. 

He can hear his own phone going off from the bedroom and he thinks it might be Christian asking where he is, because training started an hour ago (if he was in England, the right time would be right then, but he isn’t in England, hasn’t been there in months and it had been okay, but suddenly it wasn’t anymore). 

His phone rings once more, before it goes to his voicemail – it is most likely Christian, but there is a small chance, some percentage of possibility, that it is Alex and Ross isn’t ready to face the music just yet.

So instead, he keeps brushing his teeth until his mouth bleeds and all he can taste is the copper that he is made of. He spits into the sink and the blood stains the porcelain white and Ross can’t decide if it’s Ajax red he sees or Arsenal crimson. 

+

If Ross was anything besides a footballer, it would be a fool. 

A fool for going back to bed instead of training and not calling in sick; he knows there’s a fine on its way and a bench spot reserved for him next game, but something in him just can’t care. There seems to be something heavy on his chest that is weighting him down and he doesn’t quite know what to do about it. 

A fool for letting the messages get to him so much, for letting them infect his mind and fill his bloodstream. He thought he got over this, he tells himself he is over this, but when he tries to sleep the day away, he dreams of young boys and so many stars (he misses the time when he used to believe in them, used to take his fear and wish it away while sharing looks and holding hands and always denying there was anything there). 

A fool for thinking that deleting the messages and the entire contact from his phone would make it easier. He can recount the number from the top of his head and he thinks about the way the other man’s voice always held a soothing tone to it and he feels fragile when he thinks about how much he misses it.

When Ross finally does fall asleep with his phone turned off, he dreams of better days.

+

He wakes to knocking on his front door and Danish accented English filtering through the wood. 

Ross feels tired, he is tired; it’s almost like everything has been soaking into his bones and when he pulls the duvet off of himself, he almost strains with the amount of effort it takes him. 

This shouldn’t be affecting him this much, but it is and here he is, pressing his face into his hands and trying to control his breathing while the one thing he wants to do is cry.

Yet he can’t, because Christian’s voice is raising in volume and he drags himself from his bedroom to the hall and opens the door for his teammate.

At first, Christian looks like he is about to say something, anything, but then he snaps his mouth shut when he looks at Ross; truly looks at him and the tense set of his shoulders and the lines around his mouth, the scratches around his throat inflicted by his own fingernails and the bags underneath his eyes and then he just says nothing. 

It’s not the first time Christian has seen Ross more asleep than awake and the bags shouldn’t be able to say so much about a situation, but they do – he just hadn’t seen it before. All he does then is wrap his slender arms around the other’s shoulders and press his own face into his hair and breathes with him in tow. 

Ross doesn’t return the gesture until Christian kicks the door shut behind him and then he is sobbing into his shirt and he is crying, saying things inaudibly and he balls the ends of the other’s shirt in his hands – he is shaking, shaking, shaking, he is breaking.

+

Maybe, Ross thinks to himself, maybe this is not all just Alex. 

Maybe, he pounders, maybe Alex was just the last straw. 

Maybe, he muses, maybe everything is just too much, too quick. 

It feels like everything is falling apart and he wants to explain it in coherent sentence to Nadia, to Christian, to his mother, to Alex, but he just can’t. 

He can’t, because he feels like he is a failure and just not enough, he feels lost and is questioning every single why and how and himself too much, for him to be able to describe what this all-consuming feeling is that is settling beneath his skin. 

He feels alone.

He feels lost. 

He doesn’t feel like himself anymore and it’s been months coming, but he just hadn’t noticed (hadn’t wanted to); had it all blamed on one cause (fight for flight? flee, flee, fled), but they’re multiple factors and sometimes it feels like he can’t breathe. 

+

Christian makes Ross sit on the couch and it’s difficult without unwinding his own arms from around the striker, but they manage – barely, but they manage, and he joins him, sitting down next to him and trying not to notice how the only pieces of furniture in Ross’ living room are a couch and a television.

He doesn’t question anything, doesn’t do much besides sit there and occasionally pat the other’s back and doesn’t complain about the tears staining one of his favorite t-shirts, he doesn’t really mind in the moment.

The moment Ross’ irregular breathing finally steadies again, is when Christian pulls back and it’s almost as if Ross tries to cling onto him, before he realizes what he’s doing and pulls back, embarrassed and red. 

‘Hey,’ Ross starts and his voice is hoarse from all the crying and he feels even more pathetic than he probably already looks. ‘Hey.’

‘Hey,’ Christian repeats him. ‘You okay?’ 

It’s an obvious ‘no’, but Ross can see the invite to share and talk in it and there’s something alike to a smile but not quite that curls on his lips.

He shrugs, feels a little insecure, but he also feels like he is going to burst if he doesn’t tell Christian; he decides he can regret it all later. 

‘I don’t think I really remember what being okay feels like, even though I must have been at one point, you know?’ He shrugs again, hates the way the leather of his couch scratches his bare arms and focus on that instead of Christian’s expression. ‘I mean, of course, I can remember better times, of course, but I don’t know if it’s the nostalgia trying to make the past seem brighter than it was and I just-‘ 

He looks at Christian then and he isn’t met with any prying eyes, instead Christian seems to be looking at the ceiling, like Ross does himself sometimes when it’s too dark to see anything, but when he pretends to count the specks on the ceiling anyway. 

‘I just don’t know what to do and I feel as if everyone expects too much and I’m disappointing them and I miss my mum and I miss too much. It’s as if I never had a break since I was sixteen and it’s stupid to think that, because every professional goes through that process and yet, here I am.’

He expects Christian to say something, may it be good or bad, but for a long time the Dane doesn’t say anything, keeps his eyes trained on the ceiling fan above as if it will magically start turning just by his will. 

There’s a doubt that is swirling in his mind by now, fueled by the silence that he always tries to avoid. In the silence the doubts roll in and sometimes he needs to tap his leg or the wall or anything to keep them from drawing in, but Christian’s presence is too big, too intimidating for him to do that without anxiety crawling up his throat. 

All Ross can hear is the mantra of ‘you shouldn’t have told him, you’re pathetic, you’re a fool, you shouldn’t have told him’ and it’s like every demon he always tried to hide is singing into his ears with their tones low and their promises false, but in the end it all seems to blend together.

Then Christian breaks the silence, finally, and places his hand on Ross’ own and draws him in for a hug again.

‘You’re valid, man, and I’m always here for you, but if these thoughts are as strong as you say then I can’t be your only help.’ There’s no judgement in Christian’s voice as he whispers it into Ross’ ear, but somehow it feels like there should be.

Currently, just for a moment, all his demons have drawn back and are watching them silently; it’s a peaceful quiet that Ross never gets and he basks in it for a moment, before Christian’s words hit home. 

‘I’ve been fine, Christian, I have been fine. I have been doing fine and I left all these parts of my life behind and I don’t need to see a therapist. I am fine, I have had enough of that. Just a rough couple of days,’ He says and they’re all lies and they taste bitter on his tongue, but he likes to deny, deny, deny. 

‘Just someone I was trying to forget came back in my life and it’s- I don’t know, hard.’ For a moment, he lets himself rest in Christian’s embracement and then he pulls back, he is no child and he doesn’t need comforting. 

The other gives him a look that shows him that he doesn’t quite believe him, but decides not to say anything; he only nods instead and then suggest they order pizza and pig out right now, because De Boer is already pissed anyway. 

Ross laughs, genuine and fake at the same time, before shifting through all the leaflets on the ground next to him for a pizza courier. 

+

Ross doesn’t cry that often, but when he does, he feels as if he is being judged, even when there’s no one in his home; it feels as if while the walls have no mouth that they do have eyes sometimes and they’re staring, staring, staring. 

It burns his skin and it makes it crawl and he swears that if he could slip from his skin, evade his frame then those moments would be the ones he would attempt to escape. 

He would become an escapee trying to reach from the sky, away from here (the worries, the concerns, the disappointment that he is), but never daring to look up (almost as if he is afraid from the judgement from above; more people to disappoint when he doesn’t score, fingers digging into his non-existent wings – it feels like a free fall).

+

Later, when Christian is leaving, he says two things to Ross before he actually goes.

The first thing is: ‘you should come with me and a couple of the other boys on holiday this summer’.

The second is: ‘keep breathing’. 

Ross says yes to the first, but doesn’t know how to reply to the second so he just closes the door with a wave instead.

+

When Ross lays in bed, he denies that there’s anything going on besides the heartbreak he feels for Alex. 

He had been obviously alright before, how could there be anything else? 

There couldn’t be anything else, he swore to himself, there couldn’t be anything else. 

Sleep is uneasy that night (but when was it ever not).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more regular updates?? yes, thank u for reading & i hoped u liked it. this rly is a chapter to like try and get more in depth with how ross is feeling cause there's a lot he is trying to not show. anyway thank u


	9. chew / alive / unclear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: none

Months pass like that. Months filled of worries lingering in his mind, paralyzing but imaginary hands wrapping around his throat and around his ankles; squeezing and snapping before he wakes up in his bed, panting and tear streaking down his cheeks, painting his face as if it has to become a masterpiece. 

It becomes apparent to Ross how he has to handle this (this overload of emotions, this storm, everything that makes him feel choked up) and it’s simple, in the end. He decides, more so: it becomes clear to him, that he just has to keep going, swallow down his problems, grow up, don’t be a bother, keep going, be the best he can be for the people around him, stop being a disappointing failure. 

The realization hits him as he watches the twinkling lights of the boats crossing the canals, as he hears the rattling of a dozen languages when he cracks open his window slightly and breathes in the night air. He presses his fingers against the cold glass and for a moment he revels in it; and suddenly it all is just so clear, too clear – how didn’t he know this before?

So, he nods to himself, presses his own palms against his eyes, tells himself: ‘get yourself together, no one needs you like this, you don’t even need yourself like this’ and pulls them away (pretends he doesn’t feel how sweaty and shaky they are). 

+

The nightmares never do stop and in those moments the stoic expression leaves his face. In those moments, he feels like a little boy again with a too big, too scary of a world to face, but this time his mother isn’t there to hold his hands and tell him it’s all going to be okay.

+

His agent, Mark Turpin, calls him one day with his tone formal but somehow still teasing. Ross hadn’t been expecting the call, had one of his hands in a cereal box and another tangled in his hair when his phone started blearing and for several moments he considered letting it pass, die out, dim, but he hadn’t. 

He hadn’t and didn’t quite know why (wishes he had let it ring), instead he hangs off the phone while trying to stuff his breakfast into his mouth and get on his way to practice; Mark’s voice filling his ears and tugging at the doubts that for a moment where quiet (but preying) in the back of his mind. 

The other man doesn’t even know what he is doing, Ross knows that; understands that, but when he mentions England, says ‘the end of your loan’ and connects Everton and the notion of home as if they belong together, Ross realizes that he can’t deny it all any longer. 

Somehow, he feels the last bits of denial that were trailing in his mind, entangling themselves with his thoughts and decisions, fade; the soft rhyme of denial, deny, denial, deny coming to a halt when Mark goes off on some technical talk about his contract, but all Ross can recognize from it are syllables and sounds, not words and plot; he feels a little bit queasy.

The one thing that had been undeniable the last few weeks was that Ross isn’t okay. He isn’t okay and hasn’t been okay for a while, so much that sometimes he loses his own grasp on reality and is left to his thoughts, his own devices, which are trying to devour him on the spot and the only thing that stops them from doing so is the last bit, last shred, of remaining hope that he clings onto like it is a winning spot in the league. 

He had come to peace with it, that one lonely night doing wonders and the next morning he had decided that no, he isn’t okay and he is probably not going to be okay for a while, but that is how his life is and he needs to keep going, because there are too many people he would disappoint if he was to stop (life, heart, breath, football) and he can’t keep being an unfulfilling failure as a player, friend, son. 

He has become brilliant at pretending to be okay while crumbling inside, but for a moment he feels the entire act falter, almost as if he is about to trip over one of his own told lies about how his mood was down because it rained all day or how he just missed his mum a bit and that could explain this pull in his chest. 

‘What?’ He questions Mark over the phone and there is no stutter in his voice that would ever reveal the tumble of emotions crossing his face. 

‘It’s almost June, Ross, haven’t you been keeping up?’ He can imagine Mark rubbing his chin as he says this, amused grin gracing his lips – oblivious. ‘The season is almost up, mate, Everton is going to want you back.’ 

When his agent words it like that, Ross can’t believe how long he was able to keep this out of his mind. He looks at a calendar one of the boys on the team gifted him last Christmas and realizes that they only have a mere few weeks of games left before the end of the season; before going into a next season; a season he won’t be spending on Dutch soil.

He feels defeated at the thought, because he can already imagine what he would be faced with when he returns to England. He can imagine the Everton players crowding around him and asking for his experience while sharing their own and he will have to tell some story with colorful undertones while he doesn’t believe in a single thing he is saying and pretend like he is listening to theirs while everything is bleak, grey and he just wants to sleep and – 

He can’t even imagine the situation he would face when coming home to his mum with the crinkly lines around her eyes and mouth, pulling him in her thin arms, pressing kisses to every inch of him and asking him if he had a nice time and he can’t tell her he hadn’t (that everything was falling apart again, that seventeen year old Ross was slowly rearing his head again), because there had been weeks in his childhood where he told her everything going on in his head and it never made her smile that crinkly-eyed-big-wide-amazing smile and he doesn’t want to lose it. 

He can’t imagine coming home to his dad who will clap him on the back and ask him how many goals he scored while laughing his belly laugh and offering him a bear because ‘you’re a real man now’, just like he did when he got his deal with Everton, just like he did when Ross got his license, just like he always does when Ross comes home (he doesn’t quite enjoy the taste of beer anymore). 

In England, at Everton, in Liverpool, Ross knows that pretending will become harder, too close to the roots of everything to deny, to smile when he doesn’t mean it, to be alive when he doesn’t want to be (there’s a drum at the base of his skull that tells him that he is being selfish, that he has enough, that he shouldn’t complain and he agrees, but the rest of him seemingly doesn’t – he hates it).

He bites his lips, tries to gather every shred of courage he has and then just blurts it out before he loses it all again. 

‘Yeah, okay, I just don’t know if,’ Deep breaths, he tries to remind himself; pretends that he doesn’t notice that they’re not his own words that he remembers, but words tinged with a Somerset accent. ‘Everton is really the place for me anymore, Mark.’

Mark hums, almost as if he isn’t surprised at all and he probably isn’t, then there’s tapping which Ross can only imagine is fingers hitting a keyboard. 

‘Ah yes, I was already supposed to talk to you about that. Your father contacted me too, said he thought it was time for a move as well. And let me tell you, Rossy boy, you won’t be disappointed, various clubs have showed their interest in Everton’s golden boy and Ajax’s missionary,’ Ross can almost feel Mark’s grin through the phone and it makes him shiver. 

‘But for now, focus on this season, put yourself out there, make a good name for yourself and then we will talk about transferring when you’re back in the right country.’ Then there’s a click and Mark doesn’t wait for a goodbye and Ross doesn’t really want to give one anyway so he just locks his phone and eats his cereal before dashing out his door to training. 

+

Christian has made a habit of checking on him, as have Jan and Theo, even Luis sometimes makes an attempt with a friendly pat on the back and Spanglish rambles.

That training is no different as a ball gets tossed at his chest as soon as he makes his way onto the field; Christian is sporting a huge grin as Ross just catches the football on his chest before tipping it back at the other striker. 

‘So,’ Christian starts and Ross can already feel the entire talk coming. ‘How are you doing today, man?’ Christian keeps the ball up three times as he says this and he knows Ross is watching him with furrowed eyebrows and lines etched into his forehead as it has become a routine. 

Ross isn’t feeling anything for the same bland conversation that they have every training today; he just wants to kick a ball around, maybe train his left with their keeper a bit before being dismissed by De Boer and go home. 

‘Same as always,’ His tone is slightly clipped and he feels bad for it as soon as the words leave his mouth, but even when Ross is a lot of things, he isn’t a quitter (although he feels like one more often than he doesn’t). ‘Fine.’

‘Ross, really,’ Christian receives the ball from him gracefully, but still makes a noise of surprise when he feels the force the other has put behind the pass. It results in his next words hiding a breathless undertone. ‘Have you taken up my piece of advice?’

Ross snorts. ‘Which one, Christian, that’s all you seem to do lately… give me advice.’ 

It’s the truth. Their days spend together outside of training have been limited because of the fact, because Ross is fine and he doesn’t need an entire squad of football players to tell him every single moment that he is not. 

Christian gives him a look and it doesn’t help the feeling of guilt that is slowly taking up permanent residence in the pit of Ross’ stomach. ‘I’m trying to help you, Ross-‘ 

Yet, somehow, he can’t just swallow down his anger, somehow he can’t just back down when he should, somehow he can’t stop, can’t quit when it’s time. 

‘Maybe I just don’t need your help,’ He snaps, balls his hands into fists and let the ball roll to a stop at his feet and doesn’t kick it back. ‘Maybe you need to stay out of my business, because as I have told you plenty of times before, I am fine.’ 

Christian looks at him and Ross looks back and he really just wishes the Dane would snap at him, get mad at him, try and pull his hair out while delivering shin injuries, but Christian doesn’t do any of that and for a moment, Ross resents him for it. 

Christian just sighs, deep and heavy; but not heated or done with him, before he takes the football that laid abandoned at their feet and edges Ross on by his shoulders and elbows to sprint with him so they can take shots at the goal together.

Ross doesn’t smile, doesn’t think he can really fool Christian at this point, but sprints along anyway.

+

Ajax wins their last matches and if it hadn’t been clear before that they were going to be league champions, then it had been when they had one game remaining; VVV-Venlo wasn’t a strong team in the game and when they pull away with a two goal win, no one is really surprised. 

It is already decided then that Ajax would receive its thirty-first title that season, but the grand treat is when they win against Vitesse that weekend and Ross tastes the euphoria on his tongue.

It’s a strange feeling that settles within him as he gets a medal hung around his neck, journalists asking him questions in Dutch and English at the same time and as he stands still for the team photo while confetti spins around them and the fans roar. 

A good end to a good season and yet he feels a little empty – more than normal. He bites his lip and brushes his shoulder up against Christian and wraps his arm around Luis’ shoulder and tries not to think of it as he grins as wide (and as real) as he can for the picture that will be hung up among the trophy. 

+

It’s surreal to think that even when he leaves the Netherlands, leaves Ajax, leaves this all behind until it becomes a blurry and distant memory, that a piece of him will always be here (in spirit, in thought, in picture) and while he isn’t quite sure of how good that piece of him is, he can’t take it back anymore, so he leaves it, breathes.

+

The next morning, he wakes in a living room that isn’t his own (too much furniture in it to be his) and his neck hurts when he tries to move, which he guesses was for the fact that somehow every couch cushion had made its way to the ground. 

That’s when he realizes that his arm has gone numb and that there is hair sticking in his face that isn’t his and he tries to back away, but the body on him isn’t moving any inch. It’s panic that rises in his chest and he can’t help but feel his breath shorten and become irregular; so much that it ends waking the person on his chest up.

‘Huh,’ The person groans out, shifting slightly so that they nearly hit Ross in the face with their arm. It’s then that Ross gets a good glimpse at their face, while desperately trying to calm his racing heart and stop his upcoming panic attack by, although it is difficult to reach, tapping his cheekbone. 

‘Huh, Ross?’ It’s Theo. It’s just Theo who is drooling on his chest and while that still is quite a particular situation, Ross can live with a bit of the Dutchman’s drool on him if it was to save him from some low scandal of the year. 

‘Theo,’ Ross greets him, slowly descending from the high he was climbing to in the moment of uncertainty, panic subsiding. ‘Theo, can you get off?’ 

‘Oh,’ Theo just blinks for a moment before his mouth curls up in a sheepish grin and he rolls off of Ross with an anything-but-graceful movement and lands neatly on the cushions. ‘Yep.’ He calls up and Ross can make out the thumbs up from his teammate from where he’s lying on the ground.

‘Where are we, Theo?’ He asks, even when he doesn’t quite need to anymore when he looks around and slowly starts to recognize the living room: Christian’s living room. 

‘Christian’s,’ Theo mumbles into one of the cushions, desperately trying to escape the sunlight seeping into the room. ‘Those goin’ on th’ holiday are here, we talkin’ ‘bout the plans ‘n such, don’t you, ‘member? Too much drink then, Rossy.’ 

Ross has to shake his head no, but the movement makes the headache that he hadn’t noticed for a second return in tenfold and suddenly he is clutching his head and fighting the urge to vomit right there, right then. 

‘Not really,’ Is what he says to Theo when his stomach has settled again and his head doesn’t feel like it’s on fire anymore, except that he doesn’t really need to reply because Theo is snoring on the ground and Ross doesn’t really feel like picking him up right now, so he lets him be. ‘Okay then.’

Ross raises himself up from the couch and debates on what to do for a moment, before his phone rings and he tries to dig it out somewhere from the couch and when he finally has it, he doesn’t bother to check the caller ID; assumes it’s one of his teammates saying their goodbye’s or some other odd tradition at Ajax that he hasn’t picked up on yet. 

‘It’s Ross.’ He says into the phone, leans on the arm of the couch for support when he makes his way around it. There’s crackling from the other side of the line, someone breathing heavily and then a voice that he didn’t expect.

‘Ross,’ The voice says his name like it’s a foreign word, as if it hasn’t said it out loud in months and when his brain finally progresses who is on the phone, he guesses it is in fact the first time he has said his name in months and months, almost a year. ‘Ross, you picked up.’

Alex. Alexander Smith. Smith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so !! more ross info + there is a confrontation coming up and when ross is back in england, then the ball really gets rolling & there will be a lot more action + interaction :^). thank u sm for reading !! hope u liked it


	10. clay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: none

Ross wants to ask Alex a lot, thoughts swirling, streaming down, as his mouth tries to form the words to vocalize all he needs to let go of, but he can’t- can’t when Alex breaths heavy over the phone with relief lighting up his tone.

So he just breaths Alex’s name in a way that tells the other he never stopped thinking about him, that he repeated the name to himself while in another country, in another dark room to himself; as if Alex is the being that will never leave him alone, haunting his mind, his heart, his soul- everything. 

Ross will admit to it, albeit only to himself, that everything he knows, he owns, he is, is soaked in Alex and all the little pieces that make the man who he is, was and will be. He doesn’t hang up for that very reason, he grips his phone tight and can see his fingers on the other hand color white as he balls them into a fist. 

He’s ready to smash something down with all his might and he knows who his anger should be aimed at, but his heart aches and his chest hurts and he misses Alex so much that he wants to burst out in tears that he does not allow to fall. He breaths the air in and he lets his fingers uncurl; knows he won’t wipe that smile, that graces the Arsenal player’s face, off. Not today. 

‘Ross,’ Alex says through the phone. He doesn’t sound different, even though Ross knows he does himself. He doesn’t sound like the Ross who trained nights and nights with this man, when both of them were still just boys dreaming. ‘Ross, how are you?’

He feels as stable as dust as a wind rages inside his mind, wiping away any structured reply he would have wanted to form, such as ‘I’m fine’, when he’s not. It’s a lie, a lie which he has practiced with all his Ajax teammates and his mother over the phone; so much it has become an automatic reply, but- but not with Alex, never with Alex. 

There’s something, a vice grip around his neck, as he tries to regain his composure and say that he is okay, because if Alex is, why can’t he be? 

‘Ross,’ Alex sounds- sounds stable, sounds okay, sounds fine. ‘You still there?’ There’s some crackling from the other side of the line and then he repeats himself. ‘Hey, you there, mate?’

Yeah. No. 

Ross wants to laugh at his own state, he wants to cry; he does neither. He just drags a hand down his face and feels more exhausted than he has felt the entire season. He also feels a little broken, but that has been a familiar sensation since the beginning of all and everything. 

‘Yeah,’ He manages to get out, his voice sounds different even to his own ears and Alex must have the phone on speaker, because he can hear his own words being echoed back at him. He doesn’t sound like who he used to be, but if he is being fair, he hasn’t been that Ross for just as long. ‘Yeah, I’m here.’

Ross doesn’t like the sound of his own voice. 

‘Oh, good,’ Alex comments easily, as if they haven’t stopped talking for months, as if everything is alright, as if they’re fifteen again and Ross is just about to sneak out of the house with his cleats in his hands and some kinder bars in his backpack. 

‘So, the season is over, you’re coming back to England right?’ He doesn’t wait for a reply. ‘And my mum asked me if you were going to drop by? She misses you.’ 

Ross wants to say yes, but knows that if he does that he is just signing his death contract with his own personal reaper. He knows that Alex still has him entirely wrapped around his little finger and he hates it and loves it at the same time. 

Ross wants to say yes, but then Theo shuffles back in the room with two cups of tea and Christian at his back. 

‘I can’t,’ He says, it’s not a lie, but it’s still an excuse of some kind as it tastes weirdly on his tongue. ‘Going on a quick holiday with some guys of the team.’ He doesn’t really want to give Alex more information than that, feels as if it’s almost a quiet, resigned revenge; counterpart to the ‘you left me here, you left me alone!’ that he actually wants to say. 

‘Oh,’ Alex says, he doesn’t sound too bothered and Ross hates him. ‘That’s okay, talk later then, mate.’ He hangs up. 

He hangs up just like that. He hangs up as if that’s just okay. He just hangs up. Ross hates him. He hates him, he hates him, but he really doesn’t. 

Christian touches his shoulder and Theo offers him the tea. He doesn’t cry. 

He unwinds his fingers from the fist they have become and he can’t even remember when he balled them up into one once more. It’s terrifying what Alex can do to him. 

+

You should be happy, something in him says out loud, you should be. It doesn’t dim his worries, instead eats away at him more as he scratches nails down his bare arms. The sun hangs high in the sky and Spain is truly a paradise, but Ross somehow can’t find it in himself to enjoy it as he should. 

He watches the white sand beneath his feet as he walks over the hot surface, he tries to reach the sea without getting it stuck between his toes, but he isn’t very successful. When he finally reaches the part where the beach meets the sea, he doesn’t dive in as many of his teammates immediately do. Ross always has the habit of letting things stick to his skin when he should just wash them off. 

Theo claps him on the shoulder, his hand hits his back and Ross feels the impact roll through him; he ripples like the waves do when Gregory jumps head first into them. Theo gives him a look, but doesn’t say anything to him about the way his shoulders tense; he never does that, he has a habit of quietly observing and giving pats on shoulders whenever he deems fit. 

‘Come on, Ross,’ He gives the forward another push towards the sea. ‘Can’t let Greg and Toby have all the fun.’ Theo all but drags him with him towards the sea and dunks Ross into the water with mild force; if he really wanted he could have stopped his friend with a word or even a push of his own, but he doesn’t. 

He doesn’t and he watches the sand fade from between his toes; for a moment he forgets and lets himself fall back into the water; his back burns slightly from the impact with the water, but it’s the good kind. The same kind of burn he gets when he lets the Spanish sun get stuck in his skin, to hopefully carry some of the glow with him to England. The same kind of burn he gets when he gets a mouthful of salty water when Toby drags him under, but then makes sure he is alright. 

In Spain, there is no Alex and for a moment, there is no Alex in Ross’ mind. He laughs, breath salty. 

+

There’s something flourishing in his chest and it makes it hard to breath. Ross thinks, believes, knows, it has been growing there for years now, but now it finally has gripped a moment to shine. He waters the crooked stems littered with thorns with the sea water he inhales in the hopes to forget for a moment that it is living when he is not.

+

Ross looks at his phone screen and the Instagram post opened in the app. He lets his finger go across the screen. It’s Alex who is grinning so wide and bright that he is stunned by merely that, behind him is a breathtaking landscape with mountains and lakes stretching for miles and miles; but that isn’t what leaves him silent. 

It’s Alex who has his arms spread widely as if he is the king of the world, as if he has won the lottery, as if he is just okay. He lets his thumb wander over Alex’s face in the picture.

Ten minutes later he is deep in Alex’s account, scrolling by weeks and weeks of days he hasn’t seen the other, until he reaches years ago. Alex never has been someone to delete his posts, he once joked his phone holds nearly every memory he has made and how that is just ridiculous, he can’t possibly mess with that.

He looks at pictures of Alex when his beard was just a little bit of stubble. He looks at pictures in which he still recognizes Alex as the one he knew. In some Ross himself makes an appearance, but even in those he doesn’t; with every old one he can remember the moment from when it taken. A snippet from a period in life that he still knows like the back of his hand. 

Ross has an ache in his chest for every memory he wasn’t present for, but that’s selfish, he tells himself. He can’t want to be Alex’s entire world, it isn’t healthy; the other needs to find his place in life beyond Ross and he has- he has and that’s good, but why does it feel like he is splintering? He shouldn’t want him to be as miserable as he is himself for losing his place in Alex’s world. 

It’s not healthy, he knows. It’s not healthy to try and find your own place in someone else’s bones. You carve out a figure that fits like a second skin to your own and you live there, until you leave (you always have to leave, in the end). Ross doesn’t think anyone can forever remain in a space that isn’t truly theirs. You carve out a place in the form of yourself in someone else’s life, bones, heart and when you leave they’re just left with this gap that no one can precisely fill like you could and it’s not- not healthy. 

Ross thinks that maybe that’s what Alex and he did to each other, but maybe Alex dug a little deeper or maybe Ross is just a little hollower, or maybe Alex is just better with filling up holes left by loves that never got pursued. 

Ross is left trembling by memories.

+

He leaves Spain two weeks after his arrival and he has a heavy heart in his chest, his ribcage seems like it’s trying to constrict it and maybe that’s good; keeps him quiet. Christian gives him a look as he and the other guys drop him off at Malága’s airport; they’re staying for another two weeks when he is already leaving; what a fit end, true to reality. 

‘This is it,’ Christian says as he parks the rental car, even when Ross insisted they didn’t have to accompany him. ‘God, Hornby, we are going to miss you.’ He says it like he means it, but Ross finds it still hard to believe.

‘Yeah,’ He takes his bag from the trunk of the car. ‘I’m going to miss you guys too.’ He will. He will miss their nonchalant way of looking at life and he will miss the country they’re all returning to after break. 

‘We will keep in contact though!’ Theo yells from the backseat. It’s not anything anyone really means, but Ross kind of wishes it was more than a nicety, more than just a polite way of saying goodbye without using the word. ‘Yeah!’ Eyong echoes with Greg and Toby in tow. 

‘Goodbye,’ He says when looking Christian right in the eye. It feels definite, it feels forever and Christian grimaces. ‘Goodbye everyone.’ He gives a little wave to everyone else in the car and puts his hand on Christian’s shoulder before he can follow him, he gives him a look and then his teammate- ex-teammate, nods.

‘Bye, Ross.’ Christian says, his own hand going up in a wave that isn’t really enthusiastic in any way. 

Ross turns around, drags his bag behind him into the airport and he can feel eyes burn on the back of his head. It’s not a good kind of burn. 

The airport doors slide open when he approaches them and he drops his grin as soon as they close behind him. 

+

Ross feels a strange kind of euphoria when his airplane touches down in England; almost a sensation of ‘I’ve made it this far!’. He tries to disregard it, but his heart is pounding a hundred miles a minute and his head is screaming all his wondering thoughts at him. The steward asks him if he is alright, he acts as if he didn’t hear them. 

+

He takes a picture of the airport when he sits next to his mother in the car to go back to his parents’ house for the rest of the summer and quickly posts it on Instagram; before he thinks the better of it, he simply captions it ‘good to be back home!’. If that is the truth, he doesn’t really know, but he wants it to be. 

+

When Ross enters the house after his mother, he didn’t expect anything but a heavy atmosphere in a house that he hasn’t seen for over a year. What he actually gets is a glowing father who all but jumps onto his shoulders. 

‘Why didn’t you tell us, Ross!’ His father half-shouts in excitement that isn’t very usual on his face or in his voice anymore, not since Ross was a boy. His father’s eyes are twinkling and he is confused and somewhere he is also afraid- he doesn’t know why or what for, but there’s an uneasy tension that is building up in the pit of his stomach. 

He puts his hands onto his father’s shoulders and tries to take a step back to recollect whatever he could have done to make his dad this happy – happy in a way he never really thought he would achieve again after his first signing with Everton. 

‘Dad?’ He starts to question, until his father drags him with him towards the kitchen. ‘Dad, is everything okay?’ 

Something slides down his spin and it feels a lot like anxiety, Ross doesn’t think he is going to like the answer if it’s given to him. Whenever his father is this excited something is always up, Ross learnt that when he was still young. When he was still a boy with hands too small to raise the expectations his father had for him, but he doesn’t think that ever changed, not even when his height went up and his limbs got longer. His father was a hard man to please and still is; will probably always be, he sucks in a breath. 

‘Dad.’ He repeats once more, before his father suddenly releases him and his eyes land on another figure in the room, on Mark who is smirking at him from the dinner table. His agent has his hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, elbows resting on the table and normally that wouldn’t bother Ross as much, but in that moment, he feels irritation hit him in the chest; he guesses, it’s that smirk he can’t help but dislike, it feels like trouble. 

‘Ross,’ Mark abandons his cup on the table and goes to stand to meet his client. He claps Ross on the shoulder in a way that’s nowhere near friendly; Ross almost wants to say it is to hurt but- he shakes his head and refocuses his gaze on the other man. When their eyes cross it’s nothing friendly either’s look holds. 

‘Good to see you, lad. Did you have a good flight?’ Mark winds his arm around Ross’ shoulders and helps him get a seat at his own parents’ dinner table. It’s an image, an event, he never thought he would be alive to see.

His head spins a bit, everything feels like a dream. The moment he got off the plane when finally reaching Heathrow is the moment it felt like he fell down into a world that isn’t his. He blamed it on being away from home too long, but he isn’t sure anymore; he tries to focus on his hands, but the lines on his palms look unfamiliar. 

‘I already told your father the great news.’ Mark says, smiling in a way that could make anyone uncomfortable if they saw the intent behind it. And the trouble bred, rears its ugly head, Ross muses, and Mark seems aware of everything going through his client’s head but seems entirely unbothered by it; after all, what does he have to lose? Nothing, Ross thinks to himself bitterly. 

Ross shrugs off his agent’s arms and takes a seat at the table, afraid he would otherwise tumble over. He still feels like everything is not real, somehow he knows what the news Mark wants to bring is and he doesn’t want to believe it, wants to close his eyes instead and actually dream (this just feels like a nightmare). 

‘Mark.’ He just says instead, sounding tired and done, because he is. His father frowns at him and he suddenly has trouble swallowing; he tries to ignore the shiver that goes through his body at the sheer idea of disappointing his father once more. 

Mark goes back to his previous seat, clasps his mug in both hands. ‘Haven’t you checked your emails the last two weeks, Ross? You did have Wi-Fi in Spain, didn’t you?’ 

Mark knows he did, the few texts between them were evidence of that, but he just acts. He always just acts, because that is the kind of character Mark is; he always has his joker hidden between his aces; if this was another life and if he maybe wasn’t a football player, if Mark wasn’t his agent, he could hate the man. 

Yet he is a football player and Mark is his agent so he just rests his wrists on the table and looks at him. Mark is amazing at what he does, but his edges are sharp and you need to be careful to not continuously cut yourself on them.

‘I-‘ He tries, stops. No avail. 

‘Nevertheless, I’m sure you will love this!’ His dad buts in, excited and loud, but all Ross has is eyes for Mark, who nods his head and shrugs his shoulders. He takes a sip of his coffee and Ross swears with the steam that is coming from the cup, he should burn his tongue, but he doesn’t; just smiles wider.

That’s when Ross turns around to face his father. ‘Dad, what?’

‘Arsenal, Ross!’ His father laughs, but it sounds rough as if his voice isn’t used to making that sound and Ross knows for a fact that’s the truth. ‘Mr. Turpin here just informed your mum and I that Arsenal is interested in you! You know how proud your grandpa would have been of you? How proud I am of you!’ 

Ross feels like a little boy again. A little boy who got a football for one of the first Christmases he can remember with his father standing tall and proud above him while they went out into the snow to kick the ball around. 

A father who expected too much and deemed that he got too little from his only son. A father who was beyond the time to give himself blisters from training too hard so he made his son carry them. A father who never reached his own dreams so made them his son’s. 

Ross never knows what to do about his dad, tries to avoid him as much as he can (there’s a reason he hasn’t been home for Christmas in three years), but maybe he holds grudges he shouldn’t. He never knows, Alex never said anything about it and he is the only one who knows about the bruised ankles from too much training and scabbed elbows from tackling too much in an attempt of perfection. Ross only knows that there’s some righteousness he wants to get by his dad, but probably never will achieve. 

Life goes on. 

Mark looks at him, his expression tight, but his grip around the coffee mug loosens. ‘Now, Mr. Hornby, Ross has not yet made the decision,’ He says smoothly. Perhaps this is why Ross has kept him around longer than he probably should have, the awareness of where the line should be drawn, straight and firm. ‘But there is no haste; the summer window doesn’t close for another two weeks.’

His father looks at him like he never looks at him anymore with so much joy that Ross thinks back to a time he never really remembers. Memories he claims as his own, but feels like they almost can’t be – a happy dad holding his son in his arms as they jump around together in celebration of his first match won; the same kind of joy etched into the lines of his face back then as there is right now. 

He dad almost scoffs at Mark, but catches himself. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ He waves his hands around, as if he tries to tell a story through them instead of his words. ‘My boy knows what is good for him, Arsenal will be just the push he needs in his career,’ His dad smiles, it doesn’t suit him. ‘Instead of those oldies at Everton, right, son?’

Ross doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to reply, he just wants to sleep and hide in his room, until his mother finally brings up a plate like she used to do when he was seventeen and so lost in the world. Sometimes he feels as if he never really found his way. 

‘Now, Henry,’ His mother jumps in and Ross wants to thank her with every fiber in his body, but he just looks at the wood of the table and counts the rings. ‘How about we all have a sit down and some tea to discuss this news.’ 

His mother always has been a bit of his savior and she makes her promises of always being there for him true (or she tries to, but sometimes he looks at her and thinks that she can never really understand). 

His father looks at her and shakes his head, but does take a seat at the table nonetheless. ‘No, Mary, I’m sure our boy knows that it is quite obviously the best decision for him, this family and most importantly his career.’ His father has always been a stubborn man. 

‘Ross,’ His dad turns to him with his brows arched. ‘What do you think, son?’ 

Ross doesn’t really know what to think, doesn’t really want to think, but he never really had the fighting spirit to stand up to his dad so his chest deflates and he breaths out a ‘yes, of course’, before he can grasp the words out of the air again. 

Mark looks at him, frowns and doesn’t write anything down. 

+

His father is getting beer from the garage to celebrate and his mother is making some snacks when Mark goes to leave, Ross accompanies him to the door. Mark looks at Ross and Ross looks at Mark. 

‘It’s your decision, Ross.’ Mark says and Ross smiles (but not like a person should smile, just all rough edges and painful memories shoved into one gesture). His agent nods as if he has been told a whole story and suddenly understands; Ross knows he doesn’t, not really, but it stops him from asking.

‘I know,’ Ross then says, but it is not really his decision anymore. His hears the backdoor slam shut and his dad’s cheering come from the living room; Ross can imagine him on the phone with one of his buddies, bragging about his son, the new Arsenal player; he feels sick. 

Ross looks at Mark and Mark looks at Ross. ‘Bye, Mark.’ Ross says as he closes the door; Mark doesn’t wave, just gives him a look that Ross doesn’t answer. The door clicks shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey!! i know the update is super late, but i had a lot to deal with; now summer is finally here, i can focus a whole lot more on writing so i'll definitely try to update more often! i hope you enjoyed the chapter and thank you a lot for reading.
> 
> very soon (probably next chapter) ross and alex will meet at arsenal! finally! i know the story so far has been very slow burn, but the (foot)ball will finally start rolling (and go quickly up in pace), i promise!!


	11. flaw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ross debates things, has a crisis and faces the past in more ways than one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise! i'm not dead. and i want to finish this, for anyone who does want to see this finished and a little bit for myself too. so hey, i've been gone for ages but here i am, trying to make this something that is semi-ok. hope you enjoy! hopefully my summer holiday means i will not leave this for dead for a year.
> 
> tw: general negative thoughts

Night comes quickly in the company of his father pumped up on too much beer and his mother frowning in the corner. He doesn’t know if it’s directed at him or his dad and he doesn’t really want to know either. He sips on bitter beer and thinks about all the poetic verses he could come up with if he wanted to about how his situation is bitter like his drink, but he frowns (just like his mother, a split image) and is glad that he never became a poet in this life.

 

He looks out his childhood’s room window, the sky is robbed of all its light quicker than it had been when Ross was still in Spain. When he was still away from the worries, away from all this that he didn’t want to face. 

 

Some things change and others don’t. He can hear the rumble of his parents downstairs, hear his father’s heavy footsteps and his mother’s soft but firm voice. He’s once again transported back to a time where he still had to look up at his mother and could fit in his current clothes five times. It is all this house seems to do to him, trap him in memories and flares of things that were, could have been and should have been. 

 

There’s no point in them, no point thinking about them, discussing them or, god forbid, having a self-centered crisis about them at one a.m. in the morning while trying to catch his own reflection’s eyes in the dark. His dad had almost broken that mirror, he’d been angry and that had been all, the only reason; Ross couldn’t fix him or anything then and he couldn’t fix it now even if he tried. 

Ross doesn’t really want to try anymore though. He just kind of wants to sink into the mattress of his childhood bed and try to hold onto what did make this place a good home; it is more difficult than it should be to name a few. 

 

*

Describe your fears, the night whispers to him, shadows crowding him.

His mind advises: say the dark, say a career failing injury, say his father’s disappointment, say burning alive. He does not say any of those things, except in an afterwards added huff under his breath. 

Instead he says: running out of time, time, the end. He writes it down, never utters it to more people than himself, he writes it down and it takes three seconds and two milliseconds. It takes three seconds and two milliseconds and the word looks loopy, so he erases it. Erasing takes five seconds and nine milliseconds, writing it again takes two seconds and fifty milliseconds. 

He does not know how to handle time, he looks at the eraser rubbings and thinks about how this should not matter, but it does. Every bit of excitement he has felt for the future fades away ever so slowly with every hit of midnight on the clock whenever he did once again not enjoy a day, did not want to stay alive another day. It fades away each time another day bleeds away into a new night (time). 

His fingers burn, his wrists ache and his palms itch. He wants to write an elaborate letter to Father Time. He wants to tell him in detail what he thinks about this all. He wants to describe this car crash he has found himself on; one he knows will happen before it does and time passes achingly slow and the wall is still nowhere to be seen, but he knows that it’ll come. 

He breathes in, slowly, thinks about how time could steal exactly this away from him. This is not what I had planned, he wants to write and it would take him nine seconds and twelve milliseconds. It wouldn’t matter, he knows, but perhaps it can be cathartic (he almost laughs at himself and he would have if he wasn’t left so empty-lunged from fear of never fulfilling anything).

So, he puts his pen to the paper and tries. It starts: Dear Father Time, fuck you. 

He is petrified of time or maybe not even time itself; he is terrified of the way it rules his entire life. He thinks about time and scares himself thinking of the fact that he can’t exist without this very concept of time. 

Has anyone managed to escape the fate we are tied to by the hands of the clock like they are our own? 

He ponders, bites his tongue, tastes blood, revels in being alive. 

Maybe. Maybe not. He doesn’t quite know and he won’t ever really; he just doesn’t think he has enough time to find the answers to all these questions haunting his mind, nestling in the crooks and crevices of his brain. He is twenty-two and he has a fulltime football career and he will only live for approximately eighty-five years and-.

Time is him, he is time and yet people have created the concept themselves. How did everyone let a concept, a mere creation, take over their lives? When did he let this happen to himself? When did he become the mad professor and when did this silly concept become his very own Frankenstein? He laughs, bitter, frozen, dreamlike, as he decides that was before his own time. 

Irony runs through him and it is a funny thing. A blessing in the way that time never seems able to touch irony, it stays far away from it as irony roams the cage that he has let his ribcage become. Time does not touch irony. Not like sadness, not like hate, not like anger, not like happiness. Irony is solid, secure and everything he wishes he could be, but isn’t. Everything he wishes time wasn’t, but is. 

Time is quite easily and subjectively everyone’s, his, yours, but objectively it is no one’s. It is different in each of its aspects. A month for him could be a second for someone like Alex. Everyone takes reality and twist it into a point of view. 

Everything is different between the lines of time. Between the grains of sand in the hourglass. 

What is he if not for time, for his greatest fear? What is he if he doesn’t give into the pull and the push of this monster that clings onto him as tightly as it can manage? Is it a monster, he questions himself about it sometimes; he decides it is another subjective matter. All his own reality, all through his own eyes.

For him, it is a monster that sticks to him like a second skin. A monster hiding on his walls, in the clocks and the ticking, but hiding mostly in his mind; in the crooks and nooks and everything in between.

What will he do with this life he has gotten? What will he do when he feels stuck? What will he do when Arsenal comes knocking, but he doesn’t want to answer? He doesn’t know. Time passes by, minutes become hours, hourglasses are filled, this he knows. 

This he knows: he is terrified, absolutely terrified, of time. 

*

Arsenal comes knocking the very next day, when Ross is just pulling himself out of bed and from between the sheets, trying desperately to forget the nightmare that wraps itself around him. He curses this house and this room and the people downstairs whom he should love more than anyone in the world, but somehow doesn’t. 

Somewhere along the line, along with time, everything shifted and everything shaped into new things and Ross isn’t that boy from the muddy pitch anymore, he hasn’t been that boy in years and he doesn’t know why it took him so long to realize or even notice.  
Arsenal is calling, quite literally, as Ross pulls his phone out from under the pillow. He picks up the phone on the fourth ring and Mark sounds unsurprised when all he does to announce his presence is grunt. 

‘Hello sunshine, am I calling at a good time?’ Ross doesn’t bother responding, he knows Mark isn’t really looking for a reply. ‘That’s good to hear. Now I talked with the big men and you’re sliding right into Arsenal red this Summer window, Rossy.’

This time the pause in Mark’s voice feels more genuine and Ross grunts again before Mark says his goodbyes and hangs up as quickly as he had called. Their interaction had lasted all of three minutes and Ross wants to go back to bed, burry himself under the mountain of blankets his mother had provided and not resurface for weeks. 

It is then that his father barges into his room, dressed in an old Arsenal jersey of Ross’ grandfather and with a smile that twists his face, unnaturally gracing his lips. It is a sight to behold and the kid from the hand-me-down cleats would have wept if it had been him seeing this. All this Ross does is watch him unamused, if called out upon it he’d blame the tiredness; he’d still suck it up in the face of a threat he’d compare to time itself, his father. 

‘Ross, Arsenal!’ His dad yells out. As if anyone would let him forget. Mark, his father, his own thoughts and nightmares. 

‘Arsenal.’ He agrees, because that’s what everyone expects, even himself, so he does. Ross doesn’t like thinking of how well that fits his life the last years if not the last decade. From a boy too clumsy for his frame to this person he doesn’t want to be. 

‘Arsenal.’ His mother yells from where she’s coming up the stairs, football socks dangling from the laundry hamper she’s holding in her arms. 

Despite himself, despite everything, he makes himself grin. 

*

Arsenal comes. 

*

When Ross gets to Arsenal, he isn’t alone in being new. German striker Lukas Podolski comes with him to the club and there’s one simple things Ross thinks about the other man. It consists mostly of him thanking Lukas several times in his thoughts for taking the attention off of him and anything he brings to the team.

Everyone fawns over the new potential that Lukas shows, they are up in his face and almost can’t be swatted away from the new talent. They’re like flies and Ross would have suffocated ages ago, but Lukas takes it all in stride. 

He also takes being new amazingly well and somewhere in the first few days of them both being there and having to train separately from the set team, he also makes friends with Ross without him even really being aware of it. Lukas just gives, gives, gives and never really takes unless Ross explicitly asks him to talk about his own worries for the new club, for this whole new experience. 

Even then, it feels all very downplayed or maybe Ross has the guy pegged all wrong and moving across the Channel is a daily occurrence for him, nothing to worry about; just brush off the shoulder. If that’s the case, Ross wants some tips off of him, because sometimes he finds himself gazing out of his car window and losing himself in memories of Amsterdam. 

He misses the city, he misses the people and god, he even misses the club and its wild supporters. Above all he misses Christian, Gregory, Toby, he misses them all, even when this is just how it is to be a footballer. Ross isn’t used to it yet, doesn’t know if he ever will be, but having roots in Everton and only ever having left for a short loan makes him weary of things to come. 

Moving to London, on the other hand, had been effortless, quick and easy; everything that moving club hadn’t been. He’d been in Liverpool for only a total of three days before he had everything he owned in a couple of boxes in the back of a moving truck, furniture left behind to appeal to the next apartment renter, along with a couple of posters he couldn’t bear the sight of anymore (too many what if’s and if only’s attached to the faces of Maradona and Raul). 

It is another normal, memorized morning of training when everything actually changes. Up until that point Ross had felt in a haze, felt like he was doing everything the same as before. It is when Lukas is pulling on his socks, rambling to Ross in heavily accented English about Cologne that the assistant-coach approaches them.

Arsene Wenger, dubbed an infamous fossil of a coach whom will most likely go down with the club, had only giving him one handshake in the nearly full week he’d been at the club and greeted him a single time the first day. So, it comes as a surprise when the assistant-coach asks both him and Lukas to go meet Wenger in his office. 

Ross imagines a lot of scenarios while Lukas leads the way to their coach’s office. He thinks of the possibility that Wenger realized his mistake and is going to send Ross to the gutter and have him become a homeless bum who will die a horrible death. He imagines being told it is so good to have him, but he won’t quite play for about half of his career here and surely, he would understand, right? Not once does Ross imagine what faces him.

Wenger looks every bit well-aged as people describe him. The office smells muff and that is exactly the word Ross would use to describe the man sitting behind the desk. The frown seemingly permanently etched into his face, his fingers rhythmically tapping the wood of the desk and sharp eyes lying hidden in a tired face. 

‘Hello, boys,’ Wenger starts, his voice sharp but soft as it fills the room like Ross imagined it would. ‘I hope your experience with our club so far has been a good one,’ He leaves a tiny space up for interruptions, but Ross doesn’t think he would be able to speak up, even if his experience had been horrible.

‘However, I and,’ Wenger picks up the discarded pen from his desk and tips the end towards the assistant-coach hovering at the door entryway. ‘Have decided it is time to see you boys in action and the opportunity has arisen this weekend even.’

Ross could practically feel Lukas buzz besides him, the other was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and pathetically trying to disguise his grin into a neutral look. Thus it was no surprise that it was Lukas who broke the new silence.

‘Opportunity? This weekend?’ Lukas’s words were slurred even more when excitement seeped in to mix with his accent. 

‘Yes, indeed, Podolski. This weekend, there’ll be a practice match against the Rangers,’ Wenger says with a hint of hesitation. ‘The Scots,’ He adds for Lukas’s clarification, tipping his pen towards them. 

‘We thought it would be a golden chance to see how well you function within the team and analyze your skills, see where you fit.’ 

And that is the moment when the reality sinks in. The moment when Arsenal really came knocking, because number four, Alexander Smith, would be waiting for him on the pitch that weekend, square at his back. 

‘Great!’ Lukas calls out. Great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the time thing might just also be a personal thing i struggle with, it might reflect. thanks for reading!!


End file.
